Carl Vilhelm Holsøe (1863 - 1935) - a leading representative of the Danish school of painting in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

 🖌️🎨 Carl Vilhelm Holsøe (1863 - 1935) - a leading representative of the Danish school of painting in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Holsøe's artwork has always been highly valued by colleagues and collectors for its sense of serene calm and masterful play of light in the works.
Holsøe shared his student years (1882-1884) at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen with Vilhelm Hammershøe (1864-1916), a very close friend and mentor.
Holsøe then continued his studies at the Peder Severin Krøyer Art School. Together, Hammershøe, Holsøe and his own son-in-law Peder Ilsted (1861-1933) shared a growing interest in the study of light and shadow and their effect on surfaces and objects in the interior; later they founded the Danish School of Interior Painting.
Each of them took as their main subject domestic scenes based on their own family, creating a genre devoted to "domestic tranquility".
From 1888, Holsø regularly exhibited his works both in Denmark and abroad. He received several grants from the Academy and was rewarded for his work abroad.
In 1889, he exhibited his paintings at the World Exhibition in Paris.
Two years later, he was awarded a medal in Munich, where he exhibited regularly until 1918.
Clearly influenced by the 17th-century Dutch interiors of Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667) and Jan Vermeer (1632-1675), Holsø was equally susceptible to the solemnity of the severe scenes of Hammershøj.
While both contemporaries shared an interest in the effects of light in their domestic scenes, Holsø painted with a brighter palette and arranged richer furnishings in his interiors.
The peculiarity of Holsø's works is that the artist jealously (or chastely) "hides" the face of a woman, probably his wife, from the viewer's gaze. We see a bowed head, an open neck, a neat hairdo of a woman reading, playing, pensive, resting, sleeping. The mood is conveyed by the interior of the room, the play of light and shadow.
The silence is clearly audible in his canvases...

Sources: useum; bonhams; fineartphotographyvideoart; Tutt'Art.