Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi is one of the most fascinating artists of the period around 1900. Using sparse imagery and a reduced colour palette, he created interiors that are overwhelmingly poetic in their reduction to the essentials. People rarely appear in his paintings, and when they do, they are shown from behind or absorbed in everyday activities. Hammershøi has therefore rightly been called the ‘Vermeer of the North.’ For the first time, the catalogue and exhibition focus on the role of sound in Hammershøi's visual world. The painter himself played the cello, and musical instruments are a recurring theme in his compositions. The subtitle ‘Painter of Silent Sound’ only superficially describes a paradox. For as ‘silent’ as the paintings may seem at first glance, it is a silence that resembles the concentrated calm immediately before the start of a concert. A silence that demands our attention and invites us to listen – thus revealing a completely new side to Hammershøi's art.

Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864–1916) is considered the most important representative of Danish interior painting. At the time of his death, he was a widely painter celebrated; his admirers included Rainer Maria Rilke and Emil Nolde. In later years, his work increasingly fell into obscurity outside his homeland, until it was “rediscovered” across Europe a good century later. To this day, his monochrome interiors remain impressive, unfolding a subtle interplay of light and shadow within in their meditative silence.