Ida Hammershøi: The identity of art's most famous 'faceless woman'

Ida Hammershøi: The identity of art's most famous 'faceless woman' Private Collection/Annik Wetter Photographie Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershøi's paintings had a recurring figure: a mysterious woman with her back turned. "Ida's mother is once again as mad – to put it bluntly – as she can be," Hammershøi writes to his mother in June 1891. SMK Open Vilhelm's engagement portrait of Ida, which was exhibited in Paris and admired by Renoir, among others Author Jesper Wung Sung, whose novel Kvinde set fra ryggen,, imagines a fictional life for Ida beyond Hammershøi's paintings, tells the BBC that he discovered files in Denmark's Royal Library which stated that Ida's mother "was diagnosed with 'hysteria'. SMK Open Vilhelm's affecting 1907 portrait of Ida was the last he painted of her Hammershøi's dedication to his work might explain why the couple did not have children; that or concern that the malady that afflicted Ida's mother was inheritable: in May 1895, Frederikke writes to Hammershøi's sister Anna: "Vilhelm has been so kind as to offer me space with them; but I do not think I shall accept as I would be in constant fear of Ida having one of her attacks".