‘Interior in London, Brunswick Square’ (1912) is an extraordinary example of Vilhelm Hammershøi’s seminal late work. It was painted during Hammershøi’s final of several highly influential trips to London and depicts the windows and view from the Bloomsbury flat he rented between November 1912 and January 1913.

Although Hammershøi rarely displayed his own work in his apartment, he hung ‘Interior in London, Brunswick Square’ in his bedroom upon his return to Copenhagen. Of significant personal importance to the artist, the painting has also been recognized as a key work in Hammershøi’s oeuvre.

It has been exhibited across the globe, including at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, London’s Royal Academy of Arts, and the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo.

‘What makes me choose a motif is as much the lines in it, what I would call the architectural stance in the picture. And then the light, of course.’

Hammershøi’s first trip to London in 1897 was inspired by his desire to meet his artistic hero, James McNeill Whistler. Although the two did not meet, the visit was the beginning of Hammershøi’s lifelong fondness for London, and he returned repeatedly with his wife Ida, staying in various parts of Bloomsbury.

Building up layers of oil paint in an immensely laborious process, Hammershøi used an astonishing array of subtly contrasting and modulated colors to capture the nearly imperceptible nuances of his surroundings. They offer a perfect foil to the milky mist which envelopes Brunswick Square and the diffuse light that radiates through the large windowpanes.