Customer Reviews

Vilhelm Hammershoi: Danish Painter of Light (Guggenheim Museum Publications)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I wonder how many art collectors and even scholars have had the pleasure of encountering the work of Vilhelm Hammershoi.......This Danish painter (1864 - 1916) discovered his own form of impressionism and figure painting out of the main stream of world renowned painters. Yes, people who know Scandanavian art surely are familiar with this master, but how can the rest of us be conversant about the likes of Edvard Munch and not have had the introduction to this master painter? This wondrous volume fills a gap for all of us. Hammershoi has been compared to Vermeer for his uncanny sense of light, shadow, and composition. Just browse through the pages of this stately volume and drink in the atmosphere of the dark interiors and architectural renderings of Denmark's buildings and towns and bridges. His figures often face away from us as though the nearby window or other sensitive light source were more significant than their face. His palette is limited to umber/sienna/brown,black/white with only the ocassional use of warmer tones. But how these paintings illumine us! Hammershoi is in that rare class of painter with Antonio Lopez Garcia - two men who reveal our world to us as though we had never seen it. An utterly elegant and quiet monograph. Highly recommended.