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 Best known for his highly realistic portraits of everyday scenes from various parts of America, Edward Hopper created works evocative in their understated nature. Painting both urban and pastoral scenes, Hopper drew a strong link between people and the emotional influence of the environments they inhabited. Far from being stark or unsophisticated in their straightforward depictions of life, these realistic portraits allow a wide variety of viewers to identify with the images.
Hopper’s birthplace, the small town of Nyack, New York, proved to be an important influence on his painting. Though locales such as New York City and the Massachusetts coast may occur with more frequency in his paintings, the effect of growing up in a small town would always be apparent in Hopper’s works. Hopper was born on July 22, 1882, to a middle-class family consisting of his mother, Elizabeth Griffiths Smith Hopper, father, Garrett, and sister, Marion. Hopper’s father was a businessman who ran a dry goods store in Nyack. The store sold such items as table linens, clothing, and underwear. Very influential to his intellectual and artistic development may have been the family’s frequent trips from their small town into New York City to patronize various cultural events. The Hoppers placed a high value on such outings, even maintaining a clipping book that included all of the theatrical events they attended. In addition to time spent in the city, Hopper’s family journeyed to the seashore each summer. Hopper would later convey in several paintings his affection for the ocean, undoubtedly fostered during these family trips to the seashore.
Hopper showed artistic talent at an early age. However, at Nyack High School, his academic achievement was unremarkable, as Hopper earned honors only in drawing and plane geometry. He started drawing at a very early age and was signing and dating works by the age of ten. Hopper’s parents encouraged his hobby, keeping a running tab at a local stationery and art supply shop. Early pieces included experiments in drawing, watercolor, and ink. When Hopper graduated from high school in 1899, though, his parents were leery of his desire to become an artist. Fearing that financial insecurity would dampen his future, Hopper’s parents implored him to attend school for illustration. As an illustrator, they reasoned, he would earn a steady income while still pursuing an Following his parents’ wishes, Hopper enrolled in the New York School of Illustrating in the fall of 1899. The next year of instruction developed illustration skills that Hopper used to earn money, but he was neither proud of nor fulfilled by the commercialism of the work.
In 1900, he transferred to the New York School of Art to study illustration and painting, where his teachers were such figures as Robert Henri, William Merritt Chase and Kenneth Hayes Miller, and classmates included George Bellows, C. K. Chatterton and Clifton Webb (later to become an actor).
Hopper’s experiences in New York City and at the New York School of Art formed the basis for much of his work to come, both stylistically and thematically. The dynamic of a young man raised in a small town but living in a large city at the turn of the century served to create Hopper’s introverted perspective on cities. His works conveyed the emotions involved when an individual faced a vast urban landscape of industrialization and rapid growth. The result was paintings in dark colors, often of solitary individuals in poses conveying loneliness and isolation. Works from this period include Woman in a Studio (1901 - 1902) and Solitary Figure in a Theater (1902 - 1904). Though his style of painting would evolve over the next few years, Hopper’s thematic material would remain constant throughout his career.
After six years of study at the New York School of Art, Hopper went to Paris in the fall of 1906 to study and work. In sharp contrast to the sober, serious tone of his New York paintings, Hopper’s work in Paris reflected the delight he felt with the city. Fascinated and mirthful after a rather disheartening experience with the lonely atmosphere of New York City, Hopper employed a wide, colorful palette and experimented with different and complex composition in his paintings. Remaining faithful to his individualistic, slightly removed perspective, however, Hopper largely chose to eschew grandiose scenes in favor of the depiction of small streets and hidden portions of the city, as in Rivers and Buildings (1907) and Steps in Paris (1906).
His 1906 stay would be the first of three trips Hopper made to Paris and other European locales. As he sought to define his own personal niche within various schools of painting, these travels had a significant influence. Painting in environments that contained the presence of schools as disparate as American nineteenth century painting, European Post-Impressionism, and avant-garde European art, Hopper managed to settle upon his own personal style (firmly within American realism, but incorporating certain aspects of contemporary European painting) fairly early in his career.
During the decade between 1910 and 1920, Hopper lived in New York City, earning money and recognition by doing illustrations for magazines and other publications. In 1918, he won a wartime contest for a poster bearing the title, "Smash the Hun." Painting was still his most valued activity, however, and in 1913 he moved into the Greenwich Village studio that he would paint in until his death. In that same year, the now famous Armory Show would prove to be important for numerous reasons. On a grand scale, the 1913 Armory Show, through its exhibition of the works of modernists such as Kandinsky, Matisse, and Picasso, widely exposed America to avant-garde art for the first time. And on a slightly smaller scale, Hopper’s sole entry in the show, Sailing, an oil painting, sold for $250, a great sum of money at the time.
This sale, however, did not signal the beginning of a flood of sales for Hopper. Indeed, he would not begin to sell paintings on a consistent basis until the mid-1920s. His lack of financial success was a point of great frustration for the artist (his first solo exhibition in 1920 resulted in no sales and little, if any, critical or popular recognition), and he was forced to maintain his livelihood by doing illustrations. He continued, however, to develop his craft as an artist. During these years, Hopper continued to use oils and watercolors to chronicle the alienating and melancholic aspects of cities (Queensboro Bridge), but he also diversified his retinue of skills and subjects. Through etchings done between 1915 and 1928, he explored the portrayal of narrative in image. Works such as Evening Wind (1921) and Night Shadows (1921) depicted figures in environments and poses that, largely through the use of shadow and light, evoke unease in the viewer. Summer vacations on the New England coast introduced the theme of benevolent rural and small town settings: depicted as tranquil, beautiful, and unspoiled, Hopper’s pastoral settings in many ways proved to be foils for his urban landscapes. The Dories, Ogunguit(1914) and Tall Masts, Gloucester (1912) are two characteristic paintings.
A major turning point for Hopper, both personally and professionally, came in 1923, when he became reacquainted with a former art school classmate, Josephine Verstille Nivison. She encouraged Hopper to utilize watercolors, an effort that yielded The Mansard Roof (1923), a painting lauded by critics. The two married in the summer of 1924, and Hopper shortly thereafter had his second solo exhibition. Held at the Frank K. M. Rehn Gallery in New York City (the gallery at which he would remain for the rest of his life), the show was an unequivocal success: sold were all eleven of the watercolors Hopper displayed, plus five paintings not included in the show.
This exhibition marks the beginning of Hopper’s greatest critical and popular recognition, as well as the period in which he produced some of his best known paintings. From the mid-1920s until the end of his life, Hopper (accompanied by his wife) would split his time between New York City and summer vacation spots, with this wide range of scenery readily apparent in his work. Hopper continued to produce the urban scenes for which he was so famous (including New York Movie, 1939, and Nighthawks, 1942), and to those he added many images of rural and small-town America. For many years, his summers were spent in various New England spots, yielding Hopper’s many landscapes of the Massachusetts coast. Paintings such as Cape Cod Morning (1950) exemplify his fascination with and love of the New England area. Images from his childhood in Nyack, New York, also continued to inspire Hopper’s work, as he created many paintings evoking the buildings and streets of small towns. Early Sunday Morning (1930) and Seven A.M. (1948) are excellent examples of this model. After Hopper grew tired of this scenery, he ventured west, first to spots such as Vermont, and then farther across the country, as far west and south as Mexico. This change in scenery is apparent in Hopper’s later paintings, such as South Carolina Morning (1955) and Western Motel (1957). Hopper continued painting until very late in his life. His last work, Two Comedians (1965), was completed about two years before his May 15, 1967, death in the studio at 3 Washington Square North, where he had painted and lived since 1913. After the 1968 death of Josephine Hopper, over 3,000 pieces of the artist’s work were donated to the Whitney Museum of American Art, where many of them are still stored and exhibited.
Relatively few details are known about the personal life of Edward Hopper, who was in general an extremely private man. He granted very few interviews, and much of the information that is known was culled from his wife’s extensive journals. The result is a personality who, in many ways, was perfectly suited to the paintings he produced: often depicting scenes of solitude and introversion, the simplicity and reserved nature of Hopper’s paintings allow each viewer to identify with the images and situation in an appropriately personal manner.
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