Vilhelm Hammershøi: Silence

Exhibition at the Hauser & Wirth gallery, Basel, 1 June - 13 July 2024

The timeless paintings of Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916) defy categorisation, building a visual bridge between the art of the Old Masters and that of the modern age. Through his travels to the European centres of Paris and London, he became familiar with the international art of his time; his artistic practice, however, found its inspiration in seventeenth-century Dutch genre painting, particularly the mysterious domestic interiors of Jan Vermeer, and in the Danish Golden Age of the nineteenth century, creating a highly personal artistic language.

This exhibition catalogue shows the breadth and depth of the artist's practice through rarely exhibited works dating from 1883 to 1914. In addition to the interior paintings for which Hammershøi was renowned, it presents some of his early paintings of farms and cityscapes in Copenhagen and London, as well as a rare self-portrait. The book demonstrates his quiet but radical originality, making him a powerful precursor of the modern masters.