Woman in an Interior

In 1909 Vilhelm Hammershøi had to leave the apartment at Strandgade 30 in Copenhagen, where he and his wife Ida had lived for about ten years. Some 60 of his paintings show its rooms, and this one, dated 1909, comes from the last year there. Ida sits with her back to us at a small round table, on a plain ladder-backed chair, absorbed in work or reading we cannot see. Above the panelling a short white curtain hangs across the top of the window, and the sun coming through lays the pattern of the glazing bars across the floor. To the right a tall panelled door stays shut, and on the left wall hang four small pictures in dark frames. After leaving Strandgade 30 he moved several times, to Kvæsthusgade, then to Bredgade, and finally back to Strandgade, to number 25. The painting reached Boston in 1985, a gift from the collector John Goelet in memory of Hanns Swarzenski, a German-born medievalist who had been the museum's curator of decorative arts and sculpture.