Interior with Young Woman from Behind 1904

Vilhelm Hammershøi's *Interior with Young Woman from Behind* is a beautiful oil painting that really messes with the conventions of portraiture. The palette of muted greys, blues, and browns creates such a stillness. But the eye moves around trying to make sense of the scene: a woman standing with her back to us, a patterned vase, a framed picture on the wall. What might Hammershøi have been thinking when he made it? Was he deliberately making a painting that would force us to imagine what this woman is feeling and where she is looking? The paint application is so smooth, adding to the painting’s enigmatic, ethereal quality. It reminds me a bit of Edward Hopper, in that there's a sense of loneliness and mystery. These artists are always in conversation across time, inspiring each other’s creativity, their own individual strokes building up to the grand conversation of painting.