Oil Abandoned House Artwork

The room in this painting has been left to itself, a worn red armchair sitting empty among the papers, books, and odd things no one came back for. Found in Montpellier and signed by the Belgian painter C.K. Hansen, this oil paints an abandoned interior in low browns and greens, with a grey window in the back wall and an old newspaper reading “RADIO” tipped over on the floor. There is a whole quiet story in it, a room caught in the moment just after it was left, the kind of melancholy still life a painter sets up not to sell but to work something out. Sylvie would hang it on a dim wall in a study or a hallway, the sort of picture you come upon slowly and stand in front of a while, trying to read the scene.