Carl Holsøe

Exhibited by Åmells

Material Oil on canvas

Dimensions 73 × 68 cm

Place of Creation Denmark

Status Vetted

About the Work

Carl Holsøe’s career as an artist began in 1882 when he was accepted at the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. He stayed there for two years and then continued his studies at Peder Severin Krøyer’s private painting school where he got to know Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864−1916), who would remain a close friend throughout his life. Holsøe, Hammershøi and the latter’s brother-in-law Peter Ilsted (1861–1933) would go on to form the core of what was called “The Copenhagen Interior School” due to the artists’ particular interest in the intricate play between light and shadow and the interior as a motif. Characteristic of all three of them are quiet, ascetic interior paintings with sparse colours and few, but exquisitely reproduced objects.

Holsøe returned to interior painting throughout his career. Effectively, it dominates his oeuvre to such an extent that the genre has become almost synonymous with his artistry. Often, he depicts interiors from bourgeois city apartments, where a solitary female figure with her back to the viewer constitutes the eye-catcher. The woman is usually portrayed at some distance and seems to be deeply absorbed in a book or in an everyday task. The pictured room is uniformly and tastefully decorated and illuminated by mild daylight filtering in through a nearby window. Holsøe’s own wife Emelie Heise often modelled for him. In this painting he has depicted her in one of the couple’s homes, either in Jonstrup outside Copenhagen or in Asserbo in northern Zealand, where they later moved.

Carl Holsøe’s close artistic kinship with Vilhelm Hammershøi is above all noticeable in the low-key, contemplative mood. Compared to his more internationally famous colleague, however, his pictures often have a significantly greater warmth, and the interiors feel more inhabited. The Danish art historian Merete Bodelsen (1907–1986) explained the difference as Holsøe “was a more sober storyteller than Hammershöi and, like the old Dutch interior painters, could rejoice in the purely immediate beauty of things.” (Weilbachs konstnärslexikon, vol. I, Copenhagen 1947, p 561).

Sunlit Breakfast is a very fine example of Bodelsen’s accurately described characteristics. Through Carl Holsøe’s sensitive brush, the viewer becomes aware on an almost physical level of the individual objects in the room and the texture of their various separate materials: the velvety surface of the mahogany furniture, the smooth glaze of the blue-white porcelain, the roughness of the starched linen, the brittleness of the glass and the shine of the well-polished bowls on the table. The window is open and Emelie is watching something taking place in the courtyard. Sunrays are streaming into the room and hitting the table set with two plates, and a slice of bread can be seen as a left over. As breakfast is an intimate family moment, we can only assume that the painter has made a place for himself in the painting.

Show moreless