Francois Joseph Heim (French, 1787-1865) Charles X Distributing Awards to Artists Exhibiting at the Salon of 1824 at the Louvre (1827) Musée du Louvre, Paris

In recent years, there has been increasing excitement for international art fairs (e.g. Art Basel in Miami, Maastricht in the Holland) that feature the works of the art world's current and rising superstars. In the nineteenth century, there were dozens of annual European art fairs, but the most influential and largest was the annual "Exhibition of Living Artists" known as the Paris Salon.

In his book, The Judgment of Paris, Ross King compares Salon attendance to today's most visited museum exhibitions:

[The Salon was] one of the greatest spectacles in Europe, it was an even more popular attraction, in terms of the crowds it drew, than public executions. Opening to the public in the first week of May and running for some six weeks, it featured thousands of works of art specially—and sometimes controversially—chosen by a Selection Committee. Admission on most afternoons was only a franc, which placed it within easy reach of virtually every Parisian, considering the wage of the lowest-paid workers, such as milliners and washerwomen, averaged three to four francs a day. Those unwilling or unable to pay could visit on Sundays, when admission was free and the Palais des Chaps-Élysées thronged with as many as 50,000 visitors—five times the number that had gathered in 1857 to watch the blade of guillotine descend on the neck of a priest names Verger who had murdered the Archbishop of Paris. In some years, as Many as a million people visited the Salon during its six-week run, meaning crowds averaged more than 23,000 people a day*

*To put these figures into context, the most well-attended art exhibition in the year 2003 was Leonardo da Vinci: Master Draftsman, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Over the course of a nine-week run, the show drew and average of 6,863 visitors each day, with an overall total of 401,004. El Greco, likewise at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, averaged 6,807 per day during its three-month run in 2003-4, ultimately attracting 574,381 visitors. The top-ranked schibition of 2002, Van Gogh and Gaugin, at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, drew 6,719 perday for four months, with a final attendance of 739,117.

(Ross King. The Judgment of Paris. New York: Walker and Company, 2006. p. 17)

Comparing the Paris Salon to modern-day museum exhibitions is probably unfair. In the nineteenth century--before the advent of photography, radio, and movie theaters--painting was truly the most public art form. A more appropriate comparison would mostly likely be comparing Salon attendance to movie ticket sales. (How about comparing Ernest Meissonier's painting Friedeland, the painting sold for the highest price in the nineteenth century and a Salon blockbuster, with Batman Begins?)

Ernest Meissonier (French, 1815-1891) 1807, Friedland (c. 1861-1875), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

If that is true, it would also be appropriate to consider the Paris Salons as some of the most culturally significant and telling events of the nineteenth century. Recently, while undertaking a research question, I was surprised to learn that there is little published about the Salon as an intitution previous to or after the Salon de Refusées in 1863.

Vilhelm Hamershøi. Untitled (c. 1900) Oil on Canvas.

Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916) was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. The exhibition, Vilhelm Hammershøi: The Poetry of Silence, at the Royal Academy in London displays more than 60 of Hammershøi's works and runs until September 7. (It will then travel to Tokyo.)

Hammershøi received training at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and produced a number of landscapes early in his career. After graduating he submitted a number of portraits to the Royal Academy's annual exhibition, but was regularly rejected.

Portrait of the Artist's Sister (1887) Oil on Canvas.

Instead of challenging the system, beginning in the 1890s Hammershøi began painting interior scenes of his home that usually featured his wife, Ida. These paintings were generally sold directly to patrons and only occasionally on public view.

Vilhelm Hammershøi. Interior with Young Woman seen from the Back (c.1903–04) Oil on canvas. Randers Kunstmuseum.

The exhibition catalog often referred to Hammershøi's life as "an uneventful life." If that's true, I prefer the term "meditative" to describe his paintings.

For the past several days, I have been consumed by a deadline-driven project. From the moment I stepped into the exhibition, I was filled with a surpassing peace. The uneventfulness of Hammershøi's works are a wonderful antidote to a busy life. Without realizing it, I spent nearly two hours going from painting to painting.

Vilhelm Hammershoi's Palette.

Hammershøi's cool tones and bare compositions are typical of other painters working in Denmark at the time (e.g. Christian Krohg, L. A. Ring, Johannes Holbek). The choice of subjects and the incredible control over the gradation of light in the paintings also begs comparison to Vermeer.

However, Vermeer seemed to always have an underlying narrative to his works, and used a very wide palette, including copious amounts of lapis lazuli. By contrast, Hammershøi seems to have no obvious or hidden narrative and, as can be seen in the photograph (above) of his palette, he worked with an extremely limited range of colors.

Vilhelm Hammershøi. Sonnige Stube (1905) Oil on canvas, 49.7 x 40 CM. Nationalgalerie Berlin.

Hammershøi's deliberately visible brushwork and muted colors seems to resemble, above all, the influence the American painter James McNeil Whistler. Hammershøi's journals reveal his admiration for Whistler, who was working both in Paris and London at the time. More than once, Hammershøi went to England in the hopes of meeting Whistler; but, whether by poor planning or deliberate avoidance, Whistler always seems to have traveled to Paris when Hammershøi arrived in London.

Vilhelm Hammershøi. The British Museum (c. 1905-1906). Oil on Canvas.

Thinking of the title of the exhibition, The Poetry of Silence, I was reminded of a poem titled Silence by Billy Collins:

There is the sudden silence of the crowd

above a motionless player on the field,

and the silence of the orchid.

The silence of the falling vase

before it strikes the floor

the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child.

. . .

The silence before I wrote a word

and the poorer silence now.

(Excerpt from Silence by Billy Collins. The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems.)

For an antidote to the ever-busy lifestyle we all lead, I highly recommend finding a Hammershøi painting and sitting in silence for a time.

Art, Exhibitions, museums, Ramblings/IdeasMicah ChristensenJuly 1, 2008