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拍品专文
Painted in the summer of 1895, Landskab. Sommer. Fra Ryet ved Farumsø is a powerful illustration of the versatility and richness of Vilhelm Hammershøi’s artistic vision, which he explored across a variety of different subject matter. Danish art historian Poul Vad considers the 1890s as a time when Hammershøi painted ‘…distinctive and important woodland pictures’ (Vilhelm Hammershøi and Danish Art at the Turn of the Century, 1992, p. 155). In his overview of the artist’s wooded landscapes, Vad observes: ‘These, as well as other contemporary and later pictures, show what it was Hammershøi saw first and foremost in the tree: not the crown, nor the foliage, which in his pictures is like accretions of green about the limbs, but, on the contrary, the trunk and limbs themselves as architecture and graphic art... A corresponding scrupulous graphic definition of the structure of the limbs and twigs recurs here and there in the art of the time, although as a rule in an artistic context quite different from Hammershøi’s – Van Gogh and the young Mondrian are examples’ (ibid., p. 158).
In 1895 Hammershøi stayed at Lille Værløse, north of Copenhagen. During this trip he painted two scenes from nearby Ryet, in the vicinity of Farum Lake (Bramsen, nos. 141 & 146). At the same time, he probably created the full-scale preliminary drawing which served as a preparatory study for the oil Landskab. Sommer. “Ryet” (Bramsen, no. 165; sold Christie’s, London, 7 March 2024, Lot 44, £2,339,000). Shortly after the present work was painted, Sergei Diaghilev, the founder and impresario of the renowned Ballets Russes, visited Copenhagen with the aim of organising an exhibition of Scandinavian art. Struck by Hammershøi’s unique voice, he purchased a landscape painting from the artist, as well as commissioning a second work depicting a woman sewing at a table in a quiet interior.
Art historian Kasper Monrad has noted ‘Alongside the pictures of open countryside, Hammershøi also turned to another type of landscape, the forest scene. In these pictures he was more than usually open to departures from the classic compositional principles and experiments with unconventional points of view’ (Hammershøi and Europe, Copenhagen, 2014, p. 130). The present forest landscape reveals Hammershøi’s departure from tradition. In the foreground, the artist has merged a group of trees into a blurred totality where the individual plant is not profiled – a description which Monrad uses when discussing the more traditional work of Hammershøi’s contemporary Julius Paulsen. One can draw similarities between the present work and Hammershøi’s Young Forest, Trøød, Summer (1907, Bramsen, no. 295; Ordrupgaard Collection, Copenhagen). Both works show a monochromatic and blurred interpretation of the forest motif, where impalpable light and diffused textures present the forest area as a world without reference – without recognisable areas or activity – despite the designation of place in the title.
However, the present landscape ascends steeply, small clearings are made; those trees which are physically further away come into clearer focus and stronger definition. They are no longer blurred, but stand firmly as individual silhouettes against the white-yellowish sunlight which emanates through the delicately rolling clouds. In a surreal manner, it is only for the trees furthest away that each branch is depicted with clarity. Thus an increased vitality is witnessed at the point where the trees of the land meet the clouds of the sky. When Landskab. Sommer. Fra Ryet ved Farumsø was loaned to the SMK Museum, Copenhagen in 2006, Peter Nørgaard Larsen observed that ‘Hammershøi’s landscapes are often characterized by what Poul Vad has called a “planparallel” composition. A principle that comes to light here in the horizontal cloud bands and in the organization of the trees in two parallel courses.’
There are certain parallels between Hammershøi’s approach to the landscape genre and his unpopulated city scenes of Copenhagen and London. He would often choose forest or woodland scenes that were located close to populated areas, and yet adopted a view that remained devoid of any human presence. Often selecting a vantage point among the trees, Hammershøi would embed himself within the landscape, training his eye on a narrow fragment of the overall scene, or a particular detail that caught his attention. In this way, Hammershøi brought an innovative approach to a familiar motif, much as he had done with his interior views, imbuing this woodland with a rich and beautiful silence, stillness and tranquillity.
By the turn of the century, Hammershøi’s growing international reputation ensured his inclusion in exhibitions at the Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung and the Exposition Universelle in Paris. The French capital, in particular, held an important place in Hammershøi’s imagination. He had first visited the city in connection with his participation in the 1889 Exposition Universelle, the world fair which attracted more than thirty-two million visitors and featured the unveiling of the Eiffel Tower. As Kasper Monrad observes, ‘the Universal Exposition [1889] included two special exhibitions of French art. One was an anniversary exhibition marking the centenary of the French Revolution, and thus comprised French art from the period 1789-1889, the second showed the art of the preceding decade. The two French sections alone exhibited more than 2000 paintings, and it would have been a quite insurmountable task to try to form a general overview or impression of the individual artists’ (ibid., p. 39). The experience had a profound impact on Hammershøi’s painting – although contemporary trends in French art were not to the artist’s taste, his exposure to the change from Romanticism to Naturalism and Impressionism among the Parisian avant-garde helped him to develop his own style.
The 1889 exhibition also informed his preparations for the 1900 Exposition Universelle, a special event intended to showcase the many different facets of modernity at the turn of the century. It offered an opportunity for Hammershøi to present a survey of his own work, featuring exceptional examples of his interiors, portraits and landscape paintings. His former teacher, P.S. Krøyer, oversaw the Danish artistic submissions, and clearly felt Hammershøi best reflected Denmark in this international arena. Hammershøi selected the present Landskab. Sommer. Fra Ryet ved Farumsø to exhibit in Paris, where the leading newspaper Vort Land remarked: ‘At last the painter Vilhelm Hammershøi has arrived all along the line, most recently in Paris, where he is termed one of the most important and genuine artists of our time’ (Vort Land, 25 May 1900; quoted in op. cit., 1992, p. 161).
There is a difference of opinion regarding how Mr. Emil Hjorth acquired Landskab. Sommer. Fra Ryet ved Farumsø in 1895, whether or not the work was specifically painted for him or if it was purchased at the Copenhagen dealership Kleis shortly after it was completed. Susanne Meyer-Abich untangles this in her observation ‘In the notes of the painter’s mother in the archive of the Hirschsprung collection, a stay in Lille Værløse in September 1895 is mentioned, during which two forest landscapes were created. One of them was bought by Emil Hjorth, the other by the art dealer Kleis’ (Vilhelm Hammershøi: Das malerische Werk, Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, 1996, p. 150). Emil Hjorth was a violin maker in Copenhagen, and among the first to buy pictures from Hammershøi in 1890 (P. Vad, ibid., p. 376). Hammershøi’s paintings are frequently discussed in terms of ‘music and silence,’ and Mr. Hjorth, as an instrument maker, stands alongside some of Hammershøi’s famed musical patrons, such as the concert pianist Leonard Borwick (a favourite pupil of Clara Schumann) and the composer Fini Henriques.
Emil Hjorth owned at least five paintings by Hammershøi which were exhibited together in 1900, including a versatile range of subjects – interiors, landscapes, and his important 1895 large group commission Tre Unge Kviner (Three Young Women) (Bramsen, no. 148; Ribe Kunstmuseum). Tre Unge Kviner depicted the artist’s wife, Ida Hammershøi, flanked symmetrically by her two sisters-in-law, Ingeborg Ilsted (married to the painter Peder Ilsted) and Anna Hammershøi, the artist’s sister. Art historically, the composition of Hjorth ’s commission has been compared to Cezanne’s Card Players (P. Vad, ibid., p. 143). This was an unusual subject for Hammershøi, sitting outside the artist’s oeuvre, and as such gives and insight into the unique relationship between the patron’s unconventional appreciation of art and the artist.
This lot will be accompanied by a handwritten letter dated 25 February 1900 from Hammershøi’s teacher, the artist P.S. Krøyer, writing in his role as chairman of the committee for Denmark’s Participation in the Art and Industrial exhibition in Paris, to Emil Hjorth.
In 1895 Hammershøi stayed at Lille Værløse, north of Copenhagen. During this trip he painted two scenes from nearby Ryet, in the vicinity of Farum Lake (Bramsen, nos. 141 & 146). At the same time, he probably created the full-scale preliminary drawing which served as a preparatory study for the oil Landskab. Sommer. “Ryet” (Bramsen, no. 165; sold Christie’s, London, 7 March 2024, Lot 44, £2,339,000). Shortly after the present work was painted, Sergei Diaghilev, the founder and impresario of the renowned Ballets Russes, visited Copenhagen with the aim of organising an exhibition of Scandinavian art. Struck by Hammershøi’s unique voice, he purchased a landscape painting from the artist, as well as commissioning a second work depicting a woman sewing at a table in a quiet interior.
Art historian Kasper Monrad has noted ‘Alongside the pictures of open countryside, Hammershøi also turned to another type of landscape, the forest scene. In these pictures he was more than usually open to departures from the classic compositional principles and experiments with unconventional points of view’ (Hammershøi and Europe, Copenhagen, 2014, p. 130). The present forest landscape reveals Hammershøi’s departure from tradition. In the foreground, the artist has merged a group of trees into a blurred totality where the individual plant is not profiled – a description which Monrad uses when discussing the more traditional work of Hammershøi’s contemporary Julius Paulsen. One can draw similarities between the present work and Hammershøi’s Young Forest, Trøød, Summer (1907, Bramsen, no. 295; Ordrupgaard Collection, Copenhagen). Both works show a monochromatic and blurred interpretation of the forest motif, where impalpable light and diffused textures present the forest area as a world without reference – without recognisable areas or activity – despite the designation of place in the title.
However, the present landscape ascends steeply, small clearings are made; those trees which are physically further away come into clearer focus and stronger definition. They are no longer blurred, but stand firmly as individual silhouettes against the white-yellowish sunlight which emanates through the delicately rolling clouds. In a surreal manner, it is only for the trees furthest away that each branch is depicted with clarity. Thus an increased vitality is witnessed at the point where the trees of the land meet the clouds of the sky. When Landskab. Sommer. Fra Ryet ved Farumsø was loaned to the SMK Museum, Copenhagen in 2006, Peter Nørgaard Larsen observed that ‘Hammershøi’s landscapes are often characterized by what Poul Vad has called a “planparallel” composition. A principle that comes to light here in the horizontal cloud bands and in the organization of the trees in two parallel courses.’
There are certain parallels between Hammershøi’s approach to the landscape genre and his unpopulated city scenes of Copenhagen and London. He would often choose forest or woodland scenes that were located close to populated areas, and yet adopted a view that remained devoid of any human presence. Often selecting a vantage point among the trees, Hammershøi would embed himself within the landscape, training his eye on a narrow fragment of the overall scene, or a particular detail that caught his attention. In this way, Hammershøi brought an innovative approach to a familiar motif, much as he had done with his interior views, imbuing this woodland with a rich and beautiful silence, stillness and tranquillity.
By the turn of the century, Hammershøi’s growing international reputation ensured his inclusion in exhibitions at the Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung and the Exposition Universelle in Paris. The French capital, in particular, held an important place in Hammershøi’s imagination. He had first visited the city in connection with his participation in the 1889 Exposition Universelle, the world fair which attracted more than thirty-two million visitors and featured the unveiling of the Eiffel Tower. As Kasper Monrad observes, ‘the Universal Exposition [1889] included two special exhibitions of French art. One was an anniversary exhibition marking the centenary of the French Revolution, and thus comprised French art from the period 1789-1889, the second showed the art of the preceding decade. The two French sections alone exhibited more than 2000 paintings, and it would have been a quite insurmountable task to try to form a general overview or impression of the individual artists’ (ibid., p. 39). The experience had a profound impact on Hammershøi’s painting – although contemporary trends in French art were not to the artist’s taste, his exposure to the change from Romanticism to Naturalism and Impressionism among the Parisian avant-garde helped him to develop his own style.
The 1889 exhibition also informed his preparations for the 1900 Exposition Universelle, a special event intended to showcase the many different facets of modernity at the turn of the century. It offered an opportunity for Hammershøi to present a survey of his own work, featuring exceptional examples of his interiors, portraits and landscape paintings. His former teacher, P.S. Krøyer, oversaw the Danish artistic submissions, and clearly felt Hammershøi best reflected Denmark in this international arena. Hammershøi selected the present Landskab. Sommer. Fra Ryet ved Farumsø to exhibit in Paris, where the leading newspaper Vort Land remarked: ‘At last the painter Vilhelm Hammershøi has arrived all along the line, most recently in Paris, where he is termed one of the most important and genuine artists of our time’ (Vort Land, 25 May 1900; quoted in op. cit., 1992, p. 161).
There is a difference of opinion regarding how Mr. Emil Hjorth acquired Landskab. Sommer. Fra Ryet ved Farumsø in 1895, whether or not the work was specifically painted for him or if it was purchased at the Copenhagen dealership Kleis shortly after it was completed. Susanne Meyer-Abich untangles this in her observation ‘In the notes of the painter’s mother in the archive of the Hirschsprung collection, a stay in Lille Værløse in September 1895 is mentioned, during which two forest landscapes were created. One of them was bought by Emil Hjorth, the other by the art dealer Kleis’ (Vilhelm Hammershøi: Das malerische Werk, Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, 1996, p. 150). Emil Hjorth was a violin maker in Copenhagen, and among the first to buy pictures from Hammershøi in 1890 (P. Vad, ibid., p. 376). Hammershøi’s paintings are frequently discussed in terms of ‘music and silence,’ and Mr. Hjorth, as an instrument maker, stands alongside some of Hammershøi’s famed musical patrons, such as the concert pianist Leonard Borwick (a favourite pupil of Clara Schumann) and the composer Fini Henriques.
Emil Hjorth owned at least five paintings by Hammershøi which were exhibited together in 1900, including a versatile range of subjects – interiors, landscapes, and his important 1895 large group commission Tre Unge Kviner (Three Young Women) (Bramsen, no. 148; Ribe Kunstmuseum). Tre Unge Kviner depicted the artist’s wife, Ida Hammershøi, flanked symmetrically by her two sisters-in-law, Ingeborg Ilsted (married to the painter Peder Ilsted) and Anna Hammershøi, the artist’s sister. Art historically, the composition of Hjorth ’s commission has been compared to Cezanne’s Card Players (P. Vad, ibid., p. 143). This was an unusual subject for Hammershøi, sitting outside the artist’s oeuvre, and as such gives and insight into the unique relationship between the patron’s unconventional appreciation of art and the artist.
This lot will be accompanied by a handwritten letter dated 25 February 1900 from Hammershøi’s teacher, the artist P.S. Krøyer, writing in his role as chairman of the committee for Denmark’s Participation in the Art and Industrial exhibition in Paris, to Emil Hjorth.