Lot 207: VILHELM HAMMERSHØI

PROPERTY FROM A SCANDINAVIAN PRIVATE COLLECTION DANISH 1864 - 1916 INTERIOR WITH STOVE signed with initials lower right oil on canvas 67.5 by 56cm., 26½ by 22in.

New York, Adelson Galleries, Danish Painting at the Turn of the Century, 1991 Brooklyn, The Brooklyn Museum, 1993-94 (on loan) Copenhagen, Ordrupgaard; Paris, Musée d'Orsay; New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: Vilhelm Hammershøi, 1864-1916: Danish Painter of Solitude and Light, 1997-98, no. 60, illustrated in the catalogue London, Royal Academy of Arts; Tokyo, National Museum of Western Art: Hammershøi, 2008-09, no. 60 (London), no. 58 (Tokyo), illustrated in the catalogues

Alfred Bramsen & Sophus Michaëlis, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Kunstneren og hans værk, Copenhagen & Christiania, 1918, p. 108, no. 326, catalogued & described Ola Billgren & Paul Osipow, Hammershøi, Hellerup, 1995, no. 105 Susanne Meyer-Abich, Vilhelm Hammershøi: Das malerische Werk, PhD thesis, Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, 1996, no. 315

Paul M. Warburg, New York (by 1918. Warburg, 1868-1932, was a prominent German-born American banker) Mrs Bettina Warburg Grimson (daughter of the above) Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York Warren Adelson, New York (acquired in 1991) Verner Åmell, London (after 1998) Purchased from the above by the present owner in 2000

Interior with Stove was painted in the dining room of the artist’s apartment at Strandgade 30 in Copenhagen, the setting for Hammershøi’s most iconic interiors. The artist and his wife Ida – who became his favourite model and is seen here from behind – lived in the flat from 1898 until 1909, the year in which the present work was painted. For Hammershøi, the rooms became the stage set for exploring his fascination with the play of light over geometric shapes. He re-visited this room in particular in several of his paintings, re-arranging items of furniture and paintings and sometimes, as here - with the exception of a small framed print - removing them altogether. The only presence besides Ida is the stove in the corner which through the absence of any other objects in the room takes on an almost anthropomorphic presence. Describing the inspiration for his still interiors, Hammershøi commented: 'The light counts for a lot, but it is the lines that I like most. The colour is subordinated, I am not indifferent to the effects of colour, indeed I work hard at their harmonisation. But when I choose a motif, it seems to me that above all it is the lines that guide me' (quoted in L'Univers poétique de Vilhelm Hammershøi, exh. cat. Ordrupgaard, Copenhagen & Paris, 1997, p. 28).