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Edward Hopper Edward Hopper is American painter whose realistic depictions of everyday urban scenes shock the viewer into recognition of the strangeness of familiar surroundings. He strongly influenced the Pop art and New Realist painters of the 1960 s and 1970 s. Hopper was initially trained as an illustrator, but, between 1901 and 1906, he studied painting under Robert Henri, a member of a group of painters called the Ashcan School. Hopper traveled to Europe three times between 1906 and 1910, but he remained untouched by the experimental work then blossoming in France and continued throughout his career to follow his own artistic course. Although he exhibited paintings in the Armory Show of 1913, he devoted most of his time to advertising art and illustrative etchings until 1924.
Edward Hoppers early training from 1900 to 1906 at the New York School of Art with Robert Henri, leader of The Eight, and his work as an illustrator between 1899 and 1924, led him to paint realistic scenes of urban and rural America. In 1924, a successful gallery exhibition in New York enabled him to give up commercial work altogether and concentrate full time on painting. Hopper had settled in Greenwich Village, which was to be his base for the rest of his life. By this time painted what is now generally acknowledged as his first fully mature picture, The House by the Railroad. With its deliberate, disciplined spareness, one of the themes of The House by the Railroad is the loneliness of travel. This is typical of what he was to create thereafter.
His paintings combine apparently incompatible qualities. Modern in their bleakness and simplicity, they are also full of nostalgia for the puritan virtues of the American past - the kind of quirky nineteenth-century architecture Hopper liked to paint, for instance, could not have been more out of fashion than it was in the mid- 1920 s, when he first began to look at it seriously. Though his compositions are supposedly, realist they also make frequent use of covert symbolism. Hoppers paintings in this respect have been rather aptly compared to the realist plays of Ibsen, a writer whom he admired. Hopper depicted his favored subjects cityscapes, landscapes, and room interiors solemnly, in carefully composed compositions that seem timeless and frozen but are animated by the effects of natural and man-made light. He then began to do such watercolors as Model Reading (1925, Art Institute of Chicago) and Sunlight on Prospect Street (1928) as well as oil paintings.
Like the painters of the Ashcan School, Hopper painted the commonplaces of urban life. Nevertheless, unlike their loosely, vivacious paintings, his House by the Railroad (1925, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) show still, anonymous figures and stern geometric forms within snapshot-like compositions that create an inescapable sense of loneliness. This isolation of his subjects was heightened by Hoppers characteristic use of light to insulate persons and objects in space, whether in the harsh morning light; Early Sunday Morning (1930) or the eerie light of an all-night coffee stand; Nighthawks (1942). As fellow painter, Charles Burch field wrote for the catalogue of the Museum of Modern Arts 1933 Hopper retrospective: Hoppers viewpoint is essentially classic; he presents his subjects without sentiment, propaganda, or theatrics.
He is the pure painter, interested in his material for its own sake, and in the exploitation of his idea of form, color, and space division. In The Lighthouse at Two Lights Hopper isolated the dramatic silhouette of the 120 -foot-high lighthouse tower and adjoining Coast Guard station against the open expanse of blue sky. Set on a rocky promontory in Cape Elizabeth, Maine though no water is visible in the painting the architecture is bathed in bright sunlight offset by dark shadows. Since 1914, Hopper had regularly summered in Maine, and this picture is one of three oils and several watercolors that he did of this site during summer 1929. To Hopper, the lighthouse at Two Lights symbolized the solitary individual stoically facing the onslaught of change in an industrial society.
The integrity and clarity of his work made Hopper a quiet force in American art for forty years and one of Americas most popular artists. Hoppers mature style was already formed by the mid- 1920 s. His subsequent development showed a constant refinement of his vision. Such late paintings as Second-Story Sunlight (1960; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City) are distinguished by extremely subtle spatial relationships and an even greater mastery of light than is seen in his work of the 1920 s. He then began to do such watercolors as Model Reading (1925; Art Institute of Chicago), as well as oil paintings. Like the painters of the Ashcan School, Hopper painted the commonplaces of urban life.
However, unlike their loosely organized, vivacious paintings, his House by the Railroad (1925; Museum of Modern Art, New York City) and Room in Brooklyn (1932; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) show still, anonymous figures and stern geometric forms within snapshot-like compositions that create an inescapable sense of loneliness. This isolation of his subjects was heightened by Hoppers characteristic use of light to insulate persons and objects in space, whether in the harsh morning light (Early Sunday Morning, 1930; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City) or the eerie light of an all-night coffee stand (Nighthawks, 1942; Art Institute of Chicago). By this time Hopper, whose career, once it took off, was surprisingly little affected by the Depression, had become extremely well known. In 1929, he was included in the Museum of Modern Arts second exhibition, Paintings by Nineteen Living Americans, and in 1930, The House by the Railroad entered the museums permanent collection, as a gift from the millionaire collector Stephen Clark.
In the same year, the Whitney Museum bought Hoppers Early Sunday Morning, its most expensive purchase up to that time. In 1933, Hopper was given a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. This was followed, in 1950, by a fuller retrospective show at the Whitney. Edward Hopper is one of the major Realist painters of the twentieth century. He is often considered an American Scene painter as well. American Scene Painting is simply a term for a popular style of painting that existed in the United States during the Great Depression.
This style was a reaction against modern European style. These artists tried to create a style of art that was uniquely American. Hopper did not want his art put into a category like that though. He felt that the American quality is in a painter and he or she does not have to force it in there. Much of Hoppers works remind us that in urban and rural America, there was a sense of personal loneliness and isolation that he felt was left over from our Pioneer years. He also felt that the rapid growth and change denied new Americans a deep physical attachment to the land and gave a kind of temporary look to everything that was built and rebuilt on it.
Hoppers paintings appeal to me because of their simplicity of design and a strong sense of light. It is amazing how well he uses these elements with ease to capture a strong feeling of early twentieth century America and communicates autobiographical components. The isolation stemming from a difficult youth and his subsequent difficulty with relationships are read in his works. The people, the environments, and the architecture depict loneliness in a simple yet dignified way.
In a sense, I feel Hopper is giving us permission to find a quiet dignity within ones self - perhaps coming to terms with personal difficulties through his paintings much like van Gogh had done. I believe he has found beauty in solitude. Some people feel that Hoppers works appear depressed because of the Great Depression that the country was going through. If he had painted during another period in time, do you think his work would look the same? Focusing in on the visual arts of this questioning time, standards are thrown out of the proverbial window. The theme of isolation remains consistent throughout many works.
New York artist Edward Hopper presented a scheme of meaningless relationships and quiet desperation in regards to urban America; he exacts this feeling in his 1942 painting Nighthawks, where a sallow light is cast from an all-night diner onto an empty street in a big city while four individuals sit in the seeming silence of the sterile surroundings. Paintings such as Nighthawks (Art Institute of Chicago, 1942) convey a mood of loneliness and desolation by their emptiness or by the presence of anonymous, non-communicating figures. But of this picture Hopper said: I didnt see it as particularly lonely... Unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city.
A late night diner or coffee shop is peopled by a random collection. Inside there is a couple, fresh from a date or getting ready for one, stopping for a bite or a cup. We see a businessman hunched over some something of his own, his back to us in that accidental kind of a way that says take any seat any seat at all, and white-capped employee working at some unseen task under the counter, waiting for his customers to need him. Four people in the same room, and a tiny room at that, hardly big enough for twenty seats, lighting up a city corner with fluorescent life. We see the painting with the initial eye of familiarity we have seen it all before. Surely, we think, searching for the meaning hidden behind such a mundane scene, theres a connection generated amongst these four in such close proximity and common purpose.
However, with a second glance comes the shock of recognition and shows us the folly of such easy assumptions. For there is no connection, and no conversation, among any of them, and perhaps no means to start any. Backs are turned towards us on purpose, for apparently no cheery light can open up our diners. The couple, initially filled with such hope, stares blankly ahead in that way we all know, that tells us theres no intimacy there, or two much, or that theres waiting, of time, of change, or the chance to leave. All four of our characters - the largest grouping in any of Hoppers major works acknowledge no one, not us, not each other, ...
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Research essay sample on Twentieth Century Sunday Morning
