Vilhelm Hammershøi: the eminence in greys

He spent the winter of 1912 and the early spring of 1913 in England as well as delivering a painting to the Brighton Public Galleries who were staging a large exhibition of Danish art in April. The show was curated by his friend Jens Ferdinand Willumsen. Earlier that year, the English concert pianist Leonard Borwick had hosted an invitation-only exhibition in his own apartment at number 2 Wimpole Street, the address where Arthur Conan Doyle had created the character of Sherlock Holmes. Hammershøi had first met Borwick around 1899 having been introduced by a mutual friend, the Danish art critic and historian Carl Jacobsen, a key figure in the Copenhagen art scene at the time. Borwick had sought Hammershøi out after seeing a reproduction of ‘Interior,’ painted that same year, while he was on a music tour of Denmark. Hammershøi himself had a great affinity with music. In a letter of 1891, his wife Ida described to Anna his sister how she played the piano every day with Vilhelm at her s ... Read full article.