Details
The image
A corner of a room studied rather than described: the edge of a table, a wall meeting another wall, light arriving from an unseen window. The brushwork is visible but restrained and the composition is built from the meeting of planes rather than from objects.
Where it comes from
This is a study by Vilhelm Hammershøi, of the kind he made throughout his career: the same corner painted at different hours, the same chair moved by a few centimetres. Interior painting at the end of the nineteenth century became a way of studying light rather than of recording possessions and Hammershøi worked that seam more closely than almost anyone, which is why his rooms now read as documents of how daylight behaves against pale walls.
On the wall
It suits a bedroom, a study or a reading corner, where a quiet interior gives the eye somewhere to rest. Because the palette is cool and the values are close, it needs daylight and a wall that is not too dark. In a group it should be the quietest piece.
In company
The Scandinavian collection gathers prints made for the same kind of wall.Avoid hanging it beside a strongly coloured work, the whole point is the narrow tonal range.
