DOI article:
Clegg, Elizabeth: "The white doors" and "the glass roof": the interiors of Hammershøi and Spilliaert: Musée d'Orsay, Paris 17 XI 1997-1 III 1998, Musée-Galerie de la Seita Paris 18 XII 1997-28 II 1998
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.48915#0240
235
ELIZABETH CLEGG
London
“The White Doors”and “The Glass Roof”:
The Interiors of Hammersh0i and Spilliaert.
Musee d’Orsay, Paris 17 XI 1997-1 III 1998*, Musee-Galerie de la Seita
Paris 18 X11 1997-28 11 1998**
Since the early 1980s, the revival of international
interest in the paintings of the Danish artist
Vilhelm Hammershpi (1864-1916) has been
accompanied by assertions of a perceived affinity
between the interiors with which he madę his
European and American reputation from the late
1890s to around 1914 and those produced in the same
period by a number of otherwise very different artists,
above all a group of ąuirkily Symbolist, even proto-
Surrealist, Belgians - Xavery Mellery (1845-1921),
Georges Le Brun (1873-1914) and Leon Spilliaert
(1881-1946).1 The coincidence, during the winter
of 1997-8, of Parisian exhibitions devoted to
Hammershpi and to the earlier career of Spilliaert, with
respectively 72 and 94 works, among them some
outstanding interiors (ills. 1, 2), offered an excellent
opportunity to assess the validity and the significance
of the most interesting of these comparisons.
Even without reference to the major monographic
accounts from which the two Paris shows in part
derived,2 those visiting both were almost certain to
* L’Univers poetique de Vilhelm Hammershpi 1864-1916,
exh. cat., eds. Anne-Birgitte Fonsmark, Henri Loyrette and
Mikael Wivel, with essays by Robert Rosenblum and Poul
Vad, and entries by Anne-Birgitte Fonsmark and Mikael
Wivel. 192 pages, 106 illus. Paris 1997.
** Leon Spilliaert: Oeuvres de jeunesse 1900-1918, exh.
cat., ed. Marie-Claire Ades, with essays by Annę Adriaens-
Pannier, Sophie Bronsin, Itzhak Goldberg, Norbert Hostyn
and Xavier Tricot. 192 pages, 145 illus. Paris 1997.
1 See, for example, the entries on Hammershpi by
E. BRAUN in Northern Light: Realism and Symbolism
in Scandinavian Painting 1880-1910, exh. cat., ed.
K. VARNEDOE, Corcoran Art Gallery, Washington, D. C.;
Brooklyn Museum, New York; Minneapolis Institute
of Arts; Góteborgs Konstmuseum, 1982-3; New York 1983,
become aware of a number of telling parallels in
the situation and preoccupations of Hammershpi
and Spilliaert in the years during which their careers
overlapped. Both, for example, were native to, and
continued to live in, thriving, long-established
northern European Coastal ports with strong royal
connections - respectively, Copenhagen and Ostend-
and retained a deep affection for these cities. Both
evinced a particular interest, consistently reflected in
their work, in some of the morę imposing older
architecture they encountered there: respectively, the
Danish royal castles Christiansborg and Amalienborg
and the stately headąuarters of the Asiatic Company
(all of the 18th century) and the Ostend Galeries
Royales and Kursaal (both of the mid-19th century).
Alongside the motifs offered by these urban and
maritime contexts, both artists felt a special attraction to
those to be found in their own places of residence. Here
they achieved a particularly concentrated expression of
a belief they also shared in the need to work only from
the intense observation of familiar and personally
pp. 122-37, which refer to Le Brun and Mellery; and the
inclusion of an interior by Hammershpi alongside one each
by Le Brun and Mellery and three by Spilliaert in the lieux
de l’inquietude section of Paradis perdus: L’Europe
symboliste, exh. cat., ed. J. CLAIR, Musee des Beaux-Arts,
Montreal, 1995; Montreal 1995, pp. 160-1, with related
discussion in the context of maisons et lieux hantes,
pp. 130-1.
2 Respectively, P. VAD, Vilhelm Hammershpi and Danish
Art at the Tum of the Century, New Haven and London
1992, translated by K. Tindall from the original Danish
edition, Hammershpi Vaerk og liv, Copenhagen 1988; and
Leon Spilliaert, exh. cat., eds. A. ADRIAENS-PANNIER,
N. HOSTYN, Museum voor Schone Kunst, Ostend;
Museum Het Paleis, The Hague, 1996; Ghent 1996.
ELIZABETH CLEGG
London
“The White Doors”and “The Glass Roof”:
The Interiors of Hammersh0i and Spilliaert.
Musee d’Orsay, Paris 17 XI 1997-1 III 1998*, Musee-Galerie de la Seita
Paris 18 X11 1997-28 11 1998**
Since the early 1980s, the revival of international
interest in the paintings of the Danish artist
Vilhelm Hammershpi (1864-1916) has been
accompanied by assertions of a perceived affinity
between the interiors with which he madę his
European and American reputation from the late
1890s to around 1914 and those produced in the same
period by a number of otherwise very different artists,
above all a group of ąuirkily Symbolist, even proto-
Surrealist, Belgians - Xavery Mellery (1845-1921),
Georges Le Brun (1873-1914) and Leon Spilliaert
(1881-1946).1 The coincidence, during the winter
of 1997-8, of Parisian exhibitions devoted to
Hammershpi and to the earlier career of Spilliaert, with
respectively 72 and 94 works, among them some
outstanding interiors (ills. 1, 2), offered an excellent
opportunity to assess the validity and the significance
of the most interesting of these comparisons.
Even without reference to the major monographic
accounts from which the two Paris shows in part
derived,2 those visiting both were almost certain to
* L’Univers poetique de Vilhelm Hammershpi 1864-1916,
exh. cat., eds. Anne-Birgitte Fonsmark, Henri Loyrette and
Mikael Wivel, with essays by Robert Rosenblum and Poul
Vad, and entries by Anne-Birgitte Fonsmark and Mikael
Wivel. 192 pages, 106 illus. Paris 1997.
** Leon Spilliaert: Oeuvres de jeunesse 1900-1918, exh.
cat., ed. Marie-Claire Ades, with essays by Annę Adriaens-
Pannier, Sophie Bronsin, Itzhak Goldberg, Norbert Hostyn
and Xavier Tricot. 192 pages, 145 illus. Paris 1997.
1 See, for example, the entries on Hammershpi by
E. BRAUN in Northern Light: Realism and Symbolism
in Scandinavian Painting 1880-1910, exh. cat., ed.
K. VARNEDOE, Corcoran Art Gallery, Washington, D. C.;
Brooklyn Museum, New York; Minneapolis Institute
of Arts; Góteborgs Konstmuseum, 1982-3; New York 1983,
become aware of a number of telling parallels in
the situation and preoccupations of Hammershpi
and Spilliaert in the years during which their careers
overlapped. Both, for example, were native to, and
continued to live in, thriving, long-established
northern European Coastal ports with strong royal
connections - respectively, Copenhagen and Ostend-
and retained a deep affection for these cities. Both
evinced a particular interest, consistently reflected in
their work, in some of the morę imposing older
architecture they encountered there: respectively, the
Danish royal castles Christiansborg and Amalienborg
and the stately headąuarters of the Asiatic Company
(all of the 18th century) and the Ostend Galeries
Royales and Kursaal (both of the mid-19th century).
Alongside the motifs offered by these urban and
maritime contexts, both artists felt a special attraction to
those to be found in their own places of residence. Here
they achieved a particularly concentrated expression of
a belief they also shared in the need to work only from
the intense observation of familiar and personally
pp. 122-37, which refer to Le Brun and Mellery; and the
inclusion of an interior by Hammershpi alongside one each
by Le Brun and Mellery and three by Spilliaert in the lieux
de l’inquietude section of Paradis perdus: L’Europe
symboliste, exh. cat., ed. J. CLAIR, Musee des Beaux-Arts,
Montreal, 1995; Montreal 1995, pp. 160-1, with related
discussion in the context of maisons et lieux hantes,
pp. 130-1.
2 Respectively, P. VAD, Vilhelm Hammershpi and Danish
Art at the Tum of the Century, New Haven and London
1992, translated by K. Tindall from the original Danish
edition, Hammershpi Vaerk og liv, Copenhagen 1988; and
Leon Spilliaert, exh. cat., eds. A. ADRIAENS-PANNIER,
N. HOSTYN, Museum voor Schone Kunst, Ostend;
Museum Het Paleis, The Hague, 1996; Ghent 1996.