BBC - Michael Palin and the Mystery of Hammershoi

With a passion for art that is rivalled only by travel, Michael combines both of these in a journey to discover more about a Danish artist that has fascinated him for years. Vilhelm Hammershoi (1864-1916) was a mysterious recluse of an artist whose work had world-wide acclaim at the turn of the 19th century but whose intriguing painting style fell into oblivion after the First World War. Michael discovers how a meticulous painter with a relatively little body of work has gone from relative obscurity to a situation today where his paintings are much sought after and now fetch up to ?340,000 at auction, with private collectors in Europe, America and Japan.

Having first seen Hammershoi’s work nearly 18 years ago at a London exhibition Michael has long been curious to find out more, to see more of his paintings and to discover what kind of life the artist lived both in his home country of Denmark and in London where he and his wife Ida lived for several months.

As Michael says :”I’m used to travelling to unchartered territories but this time I am embarking on a long -delayed quest to find out everything I can about this man, whose work caught my imagination and has never let it go”

Michael’s begins in London at the National Gallery, where the only Hammershoi painting on public display in Britain hangs, before moving onto Holland to find out more about the influence of Hammershoi’s Dutch hero, the artist Johannes Vermeer. Like Vermeer, Hammershoi loved to paint domestic interiors, often with a single female figure. In Vilhelm’s case it was always his wife Ida and the interior was mostly his own home in the centre of Copenhagen.

As Michael’s journey progresses Hammershoi remains tantalisingly elusive. Michael searches for more in the archive of the Hirschsprung collection and the Staten’s Museum for Kunst in the centre of Copenhagen. However, as a recluse and deeply private man who destroyed all his own letters and diaries the mystery of Hammershoi persists.

The search for this painter widens as Michael ventures into the Danish countryside to find out more about him through his landscape paintings of the Zealand peninsula. He meets with Art Professor Erik Steffensen who on a typically Scandinavian naked ramble along the beach shares some surprising discoveries about a Hellinistic artistic community that Hammershoi would have known in the area.

Download:
http://rapidshare.com/files/108137914/mpatmoh.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/108137932/mpatmoh.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/108137920/mpatmoh.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/108137959/mpatmoh.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/108137913/mpatmoh.part5.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/108137906/mpatmoh.part6.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/108137955/mpatmoh.part7.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/108137883/mpatmoh.part8.rar

Pass: calek

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