White Doors, Strandgade 30, 1899
Vilhelm Hammershøi
A muted grey interior built almost entirely from open, rectangular doorways.
A sequence of pale doors opens through an empty Copenhagen apartment, all soft greys and hushed geometry. Hammershøi's silent interiors, stripped of incident, have made him a modern favourite for their still, architectural, deeply peaceful mood.
What you're looking at
No people, no event, and almost no furniture. Hammershøi builds the entire picture out of rectangles — door frames, panels, the dark run of the floor — and paints them across a range of greys and off-whites so narrow that the eye starts hunting for a colour that is not there. The light arrives from a window you cannot see. He painted it in 1899 at Strandgade 30, the Copenhagen flat he returned to again and again.
On a Frame TV
Almost square, roughly 14:15, which is the hardest shape to put on a 16:9 screen: the clean crop would cut off the doors that are the subject. Use the matted file. The picture is very low in contrast and depends on being so — remarkable in a dim room, and close to invisible in bright daylight.
- 4K master file (3840px+)
- Samsung Frame TV–ready crop
- Phone wallpaper crop
- Printable art card
Public domain · one .zip, no sign-up
More like this
Other works in the collection, starting with Vilhelm Hammershøi.
