An upcoming auction at Sotheby’s features a Hammershøi painting with the highest-ever estimated value for the artist

Wilhelm Hammershøi`s painting will be up for auction at Sotheby’s as part of the New York Contemporary Art Evening Sale. The event is expected in May this year. This time the artist’s painting will be exhibited with the highest rating in the history of the artist’s work.

The art painting named Interior. The Music Room, Strandgade 30 (1907) depicts a serene scene typical of Hammershøi. A piano is adjacent to a white-trimmed wall, with a painting hanging above it. The violin is on a wooden chair, and the cello is leaning against the piano. Natural light comes in through the window.

In fact, this interior belonged to Hammershøi . The painting is part of a series of works he created while he and his wife Ida lived in an apartment at Strandgad 30 in Copenhagen from 1898 to 1908.

According to a Sotheby’s press release, the instruments are displayed in the interior. The music room, Strandgade 30, most likely belonged to the children of the artist’s friend, patron and biographer, Alfred Brahmsen.

At Sotheby’s, the painting will be valued at $3-5 million. This is the highest mark ever put up for public auction for a work by Hammershøi.

The painting changed hands for the last time in 1944. Then the relatives of the current owners of the apartment at Strandgade 30 bought the art painting and immediately hung it on the very wall on which the work is depicted.

The rating of this work is quite high for a picture by Hammershøi . But his work has sometimes been sold for more than $5 million.

Getty purchased the interior with easel, Bredgade 25 (1912) in 2018 for $5.04 million at a Christie’s auction. Then, during the pandemic, a collector bought Interior with a Standing Woman (1913) for $5 million from TEFAF Maastricht.

Hammershøi ‘s sales record was set last year when the 1916 Stu (Interior with Oval Mirror)was sold at Christie’s for $6.3 million at an estimate of just $1.5 million to $2.5 million.

The art painting will leave Denmark for London for a few days in mid-April. Then, it will  arrive in New York for a pre-show screening.

“We are proud to send this Danish masterpiece to the world and that Hammershøi’s inimitable and timeless way of seeing has been appreciated by a global audience,” said Nina Wedell-Vedelsborg, Sotheby’s Representative in Denmark, in a statement. She also added that in recent years, his aesthetic and popularity has truly surpassed his local market, and he now holds a key position in the canon of classical contemporary artists.