Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864–1916)
Open Doors, 1905
Oil on canvas
During the years around the turn of the century, interior scenes were a popular genre within the art of painting. The subject sold well to affluent art audiences, and at the same time there was a general trend towards celebrating – and protecting – the home, the private, intimate sphere in an age when modern, vibrant city life reached new and hectic heights. Vilhelm Hammershøi was by no means the only painter who showed an interest in interior scenes, but he stood out from the crowd by his concerted focus on the theme and by his approach to exploring the spatial aesthetics and compositional possibilities found in the interiors of his own successive homes.
In the years 1898 to 1908, Hammershøi lived in a flat at Strandgade 30 in Copenhagen. At this address he created approximately sixty-six interior scenes, accounting for almost half of his total production during the period, which came to some 142 paintings all in all.1 Open Doors was painted in the flat’s dining room, which Hammershøi depicted in approximately twenty paintings. This makes the dining room the most frequently used subject in his oeuvre. However, these paintings should not be seen as a series, but rather as variations on a basic theme that is examined and tested in new constellations, with or without furniture and figures.2
The main subject of the picture is the three open doors. They are all white and wide open, and together they seem to be the only movable elements in the empty spaces, where everything is uncompromisingly arranged and simplified in a tight composition built up of lines and surfaces. Hammershøi has stood with his back to the dining room’s two windows facing the street, which is why the strong light falling in from behind the artist can be sensed in the reflections in the doors, the panels and the dark-stained floor’s varnished surface in the foreground. The left door opens on a perspective view through the adjoining rooms, in which a strong backlight from the courtyard can be seen. Hammershøi offers no further impression of the rooms we are looking through, nor does he reveal whereto the doors lead.
In the years 1898 to 1908, Hammershøi lived in a flat at Strandgade 30 in Copenhagen. At this address he created approximately sixty-six interior scenes, accounting for almost half of his total production during the period, which came to some 142 paintings all in all.1 Open Doors was painted in the flat’s dining room, which Hammershøi depicted in approximately twenty paintings. This makes the dining room the most frequently used subject in his oeuvre. However, these paintings should not be seen as a series, but rather as variations on a basic theme that is examined and tested in new constellations, with or without furniture and figures.2
The main subject of the picture is the three open doors. They are all white and wide open, and together they seem to be the only movable elements in the empty spaces, where everything is uncompromisingly arranged and simplified in a tight composition built up of lines and surfaces. Hammershøi has stood with his back to the dining room’s two windows facing the street, which is why the strong light falling in from behind the artist can be sensed in the reflections in the doors, the panels and the dark-stained floor’s varnished surface in the foreground. The left door opens on a perspective view through the adjoining rooms, in which a strong backlight from the courtyard can be seen. Hammershøi offers no further impression of the rooms we are looking through, nor does he reveal whereto the doors lead.