View of the Old Asiatic Company 1902

View of the Old Asiatic Company, 1902 shows one of Copenhagen's most historically significant buildings: the former headquarters of the Danish Asiatic Company, an eighteenth-century merchant enterprise that brought trade goods from China and India to Denmark. By 1902 the building had become a historical landmark on the Strand, and Hammershoi's painting of it combines his interest in quiet urban architecture with a subject of documentary and historical significance. Ordrupgaard, one of Denmark's finest private museums, holds this work within a collection that has become a primary venue for Hammershoi scholarship.

The Asiatic Company building's neoclassical facade provided Hammershoi with a subject of strong geometric regularity. He treats the architecture with the same tonal control as his interiors, allowing the building's facade to become a study in the way stone registers colour under northern overcast light.