Alfred Bramsen, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of Vilhelm Hammershøi “Vilhelm Hammershøi. Kunstneren og hans værk”, 1918, no. 66: “Dinning room. The foreground of the picture is almost entirely taken up by a brown dining table with matching chairs. Two windows facing the garden, from which a greenish-yellow light is cast into the living room.” Susanne Meyer-Abich, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of Vilhelm Hammershøi in “Vilhelm Hammershøi: Das Malerische Werk", 1995, no. 60.

Exhibited: Kunstforeningen, “Fortegnelse over arbejder af Vilhelm Hammershøi”, 1916 no. 55.

Provenance: Svend Hammershøi, the artist's brother (1873–1948). Anna Hammershøi, the artist's sister (1866–1955), her estate auction Bruun Rasmussen 61, 1955 no. 189. Bruun Rasmussen auction 482, 1986 no. 91, ill. p. 20.

The motif in the present painting is from the dining room at Frederiksberg Allé 34 (today no. 58–60), which was Vilhelm Hammershøi's childhood home, and where he lived with his entire family: parents, siblings, grandmother (widow Rentzmann) and servants from 1871, and until he in 1891 married Ida Ilsted and moved to Rahbeks Allé 26, also in Frederiksberg.

Exactly the same composition with the dining table, the lounge chairs, the two window sections with transparent curtains and the green deciduous trees just outside, which cast a spring-like greenish light into the dining room, and the oval pedestal cabinet with a bojan on top is known from a later work by Hammershøi (Bramsen (no. 208) and Vad dates that painting to 1900, Rosenvold Hvidt and Oelsner to 1891). In this much larger and more elaborate interior, Hammershøi has added a woman dressed in black with her back turned, as well as a picture on the wall and a door on the far right.

The present painting is thus a much smaller preliminary study done with short quick impressionistic brushstrokes for a larger more elaborate and classical interior by Hammershøi and at the same time it is one of Hammershøi's earliest interior paintings. According to Hammershøi himself, he painted his first real interior in 1888, “Interior. An Old Stove” (The National Gallery of Denmark, Inv. No. KMS7246), the same year as the present one.

The exact same motif is also known from a photograph that belonged to Hammershøi and was taken by his good friend and artist colleague Valdemar Schønheyder Møller (1864–1905), who took many deeply interesting and beautiful atmospheric photos with Anna Hammershøi as a model and of the home the Hammershøi family on Frederiksberg Allé in the 1880s.

The nature of the relationship of the two artists’ works and their different mediums can be difficult to determine. Was it photography that inspired Hammershøi or was it Hammershøi's works that inspired Schønheyder Møller. As Rosenvold Hvidt and Oelsner conclude, there is probably no clear answer (p. 65). In this phase of their lives, the two artists have been artistically connected and the two writers only bring up the question to emphasize their interconnectedness “and the photographic layer in Hammershøi's paintings, whether he has looked over his friend's shoulder in the darkroom or his own mediated interaction with the painting, has had an inspiring effect on Schønheyder Møller."

The present study can thus be a very important piece in the understanding of Hammershøi's development both of the interior motif and of his relationship with photography.

That the painting first belonged to the brother Svend Hammershøi and later passed on to the sister Anna Hammershøi says something about how closely connected the three siblings have been, and how much their shared home and childhood in Frederiksberg Allé has meant. Anna and Svend Hammershøi lived together all their lives, and the painting has hung in their shared home.