Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864–1916)
Interior with a View of an Exterior Gallery, 1903
Oil on canvas

In his home at Strandgade 30, Vilhelm Hammershøi was keenly interested in the many possibilities for working with light provided by the old flat’s rooms and layout. The floor plan was unusual, combining Late Baroque and Neoclassical features while boasting several small reception rooms, larger rooms and an exterior gallery, the latter being a later addition running along the façade between the two side wings of the house. Like the rest of the house, the windows of the gallery had small panes of glass mounted in distinctive glazing bars.

The composition of Interior with a View of an Exterior Gallery is striking, because Hammershøi has sought to capture the shift in level and tone between the exterior gallery’s outer windows towards the courtyard and the inner windows opening on the living room. The result is a complicated interplay of windows, of light and darkness, of interior and exterior, all coming together to conjure up a distinctive, almost claustrophobic atmosphere where the room seems detached from its function as a place where people live.

Hammershøi’s placement of furniture in his interiors does not always seem logical, as is the case here, where the sturdy lidded chest marks a break in the structuring geometry of the white panels. Nevertheless, the chest conveys a sense of the room – or rather of the light falling in from the adjacent room. The closed, finite shape of the chest also contrasts with the windows, in which light from the outside world is revealed. As in B 312, the windows are closed and offer no view of any world outside, giving us to sense that in this context, the inside is all that exists.