CHARLOTTENLUND.- Dancing girls, sunbeams and delicate pastels – you can see the very best from Ordrupgaard’s collection at this year’s major summer exhibition, Masterpieces. From Degas to Hammershøi. The exhibition presents a wealth of masterpieces from the museum’s French and Danish collections – including highlights by such masters as Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Auguste Rodin, Paul Gauguin, Vilhelm Hammershøi, L.A. Ring, and others.

As a special highlight, the public will also be able to see Ordrupgaard’s new acquisition, White Doors by Vilhelm Hammershøi, which is being exhibited for the first time in more than 30 years.

At the summer exhibition Masterpieces. From Degas to Hammershøi, the public will get a chance to experience some of Ordrupgaard’s very best works. There will also be a very special opportunity to see the museum’s extensive collection of pastels – works that are exhibited only rarely, due to their highly light-sensitive and fragile nature. These include Degas’ much-loved, masterful depictions of ballerinas in the rehearsal room, together with Renoir’s depictions of Parisians and city life in the late 1800s.

Degas and the ballet
From the 1880s on, pastel became the preferred medium for Edgar Degas (1834-1917). The soft, porous crayons were ideally suited to the artist’s momentary depictions of the ballet, in which he gave vibrant form to structures and the shimmering of light on surfaces. His interest in the ballet grew from 1870 on, and Degas was eventually to create no less than 1,500 works with dancers as the motif. Ordrupgaard’s collection contains a number of the famous pastels, which now, for the first time in two years, will be put on show to the public.

Revisiting Hammershøi
The Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916) is considered to be one of the most original talents of his time, and his works still exert a strong fascination today. He is especially known for his poetic, highly evocative interiors – often including the figure of a woman with her back turned, for which he is famous. Following Ordrupgaard’s highly popular 2016 exhibition At Home with Hammershøi, the public will now have an opportunity to revisit a string of Hammershøi's most iconic works, including the major work Sunbeams or Sunlight "Dust Motes Dancing in Sunbeams" from 1900. The exhibition also includes a wide range of Ordrupgaard’s works by Hammershøi which were not shown in At Home with Hammershøi, as they were on loan to museums abroad at the time.

The first time in 30 years
As something very special, the public can experience Ordrupgaard’s new acquisition White Doors, which Hammershøi painted in 1899. The painting is one of the first works that Hammershøi created at Strandgade 30. It was painted in the dining room, where the artist subsequently created many more of his works. Ever since it was first painted, White Doors has been part of a private collection in the United States, and has only been exhibited once, in 1983. It is therefore with great pleasure that Ordrupgaard can now present the painting at a public exhibition for the first time in more than 30 years. The work went under the hammer on 6 June 2017, and thanks to generous donations from Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Fond, Augustinus Fonden og Ny Carlsbergfondet, Ordrupgaard managed to acquire the picture and bring it home to Denmark.

Treasures from Ordrupgaard’s collection
In addition to the many works by Degas and Hammershøi, Masterpieces. From Degas to Hammershøi provides a unique look at the string of masterpieces that constitute the crown jewels in Ordrupgaard’s Danish and French collections. From the distinguished French collection, there will be works by Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Gustave Courbet, Edouard Manet, Paul Gauguin and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, while from the Danish collection, the exhibition will show works by Johannes Larsen, C.W. Eckersberg, Christen Købke and, not least, L.A. Ring. The public will also have the chance to see a new acquisition, The Goldsmith’s Workshop by L.A. Ring from 1917, which has never before been exhibited.