Amalienborg Square, Copenhagen
The great octagonal royal square of Amalienborg in Copenhagen, almost empty in a cold grey light — Hammershøi's Rococo city.
Amalienborg
The painting shows a real, identified place that you can find today. The exact spot the artist worked from is not necessarily known.
Amalienborg Square, Copenhagen — at a glance
- Artist
- Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864–1916)
- Year
- 1896
- Movement
- Danish Symbolism / quietism
- Place
- Amalienborg Square, Frederiksstaden, Copenhagen, Denmark
- Viewpoint
- The octagonal royal square — palaces, statue and sightlines all unchanged; the square is open to the public
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- c. 137 × 106 cm
- Now at
- Ordrupgaard, near Copenhagen
Overview
Amalienborg Square is one of the austere city views by the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi, made in 1896. It shows the octagonal square at the centre of Frederiksstaden, ringed by four matching Rococo palaces, with the equestrian statue of King Frederik V at its centre and, almost no one about — a couple of small figures, a carriage. It is oil on canvas, about 137 by 106 cm, and it hangs in the Ordrupgaard museum, north of Copenhagen.
Where was Amalienborg Square, Copenhagen painted?
Scholarship Amalienborg is the winter residence of the Danish royal family: four identical palaces around an octagonal cobbled square in the planned Frederiksstaden quarter, laid out in the 1750s, with the domed Marble Church closing one axis and the harbour the other. The square, the palaces, the statue and the sightlines are all unchanged and the square is open to the public (with the changing of the guard daily); Hammershøi's framing can be matched closely — only the emptiness and the grey light are his.
What is in the painting?
A broad expanse of grey cobblestones fills the foreground. One of the palace ranges, pale stone with rows of windows and a low colonnade, runs across the middle distance; the bronze equestrian statue stands on its plinth; a gap between buildings shows a further street. Two or three tiny figures and perhaps a carriage are the only life. The sky is flat, pale and cold; the whole picture is greys, stone-buffs and muted browns.
Look closely
The bare cobbles
A vast grey expanse of cobblestones fills the foreground, almost featureless.
The equestrian statue
The bronze King Frederik V on its plinth — the one strong vertical in the square.
The Rococo palace range
A pale stone façade with a low colonnade runs quietly across the middle distance.
The two or three figures
Tiny people and perhaps a carriage are the only life in a space built for ceremony.
Analysis
Composition and technique
A vast empty foreground of cobbles, the palace façade a horizontal band, the statue the one vertical accent.
Scholarship Hammershøi gives most of the canvas to bare paving and pale sky, reduces the grand architecture to a quiet band, and drains the scene of people and colour, so a state ceremonial space becomes still, abstract and faintly melancholy — the same mood as his famous grey interiors, applied to the city.
History & provenance
The painting is in the Ordrupgaard collection, Charlottenlund, near Copenhagen.
Sources
- Ordrupgaard, Charlottenlund — collection entry for Vilhelm Hammershøi, ‘Amalienborg Square, Copenhagen’ (1896)
- Felix Krämer (ed.), ‘Hammershøi’ (Royal Academy, 2008)
Related paintings
Current display status
Currently not on viewMore by Vilhelm Hammershøi
