The Garden of the Prince's Palace, Copenhagen 1905

Svend Hammershøi made this subtle and restrained painting of the Garden of the Prince's Palace in Copenhagen with oil on canvas. It’s a world of greys and greens, where even the red roofs seem hushed. You can almost feel the quiet concentration of the painter, layering thin washes, building up the image slowly. I imagine him, brush in hand, contemplating the scene, trying to capture its mood more than its precise details. The bare trees reach up like delicate charcoal lines, their branches a kind of skeletal drawing against the muted sky. There’s a beautiful stillness here, a sense of being in a world slightly removed, seen through a veil. Hammershøi, like his brother Vilhelm, often returned to similar themes and a muted palette. I wonder if that was partly inspired by Vilhelm, but equally a way to see more clearly. They remind us that painting is an ongoing experiment, each artist building upon the work of those who came before, creating a shared visual language across time.