Vilhelm Hammershøi, Portrait of a Young Girl, 1885. I had never heard of Hammershøi before I saw his paintings in the Guardian a couple weeks ago, but how could I not instantly fall in love with these cool grey meditative images? The artist had moderate success in his native Denmark during his lifetime (1864-1916) and is currently being featured in a solo retrospective at the Royal Academy in London that seeks to introduce him to a new audience who like me was not aware of his existence. I would kill to see these paintings in person and will definitely be making the Hirschprung one of my destinations when I visit Copenhagen in a few years, where Hammershøi's archive resides. I love his motif of the woman with her back turned to the viewer (very Gerhard Richter!), and again his muted color palette is simply gorgeous. The curator of the Royal Academy show is confident that visitors will appreciate the work:
"I think this exhibition will be a revelation," comments [Felix] Kramer. "It's
not true that Hammershøi just stayed home and painted his living room.
These are not grey paintings - there is a lot going on."
Look at some images from the retrospective here, as well as photographs of Hammershøi and his family which illustrate how deftly he pulled from real life. I seriously want to curl up inside of one of those paintings and just stay for a while.