Oil Painting

  Edward Hopper
  1882-1967
     Edward Hopper was an American Scene painter and printmaker best remembered for his eerily realistic depictions of solitude in contemporary American life. While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching.
     Edward Hopper was born in Nyack, New York to a prosperous dry-goods merchant. He studied commercial art and painting in New York City. One of his teachers, artist Robert Henri, encouraged his students to use their art to “make a stir in the world”. Henri, an influence on Hopper, motivated students to render realistic depictions of urban life. Henri’s students, many of whom developed into important artists, became known as the Ashcan School of American art.
     Upon completing his formal education, Hopper made three trips to Europe to study the emerging art scene there, but unlike many of his contemporaries who imitated the abstract cubist experiments, the idealism of the realist painters resonated with Hopper. His early projects reflect the realist influence.
     In 1925 he produced House by the Railroad, a classic work that marks his artistic maturity. The piece is the first of a series of stark urban and rural scenes that uses sharp lines and large shapes, played upon by unusual lighting to capture the lonely mood of his subjects. He derived his subject matter from the common features of American life – gas stations, motels, the railroad, or an empty street.
     Hopper continued to paint in his old age, dividing his time between New York City and Truro, Massachusetts. He died in 1967, in his studio near Washington Square, in New York City. His wife, painter Josephine Nivison, who died 10 months later, bequeathed his work to the Whitney Museum of American Art. Other significant paintings by Hopper are at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Des Moines Art Center, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
     The best known of Hopper’s paintings, Nighthawks (1942), shows customers sitting at the counter of an all-night diner. The diner’s harsh electric light sets it apart from the gentle night outside. The diners, seated at stools around the counter, appear isolated.
     Hopper’s rural New England scenes, such as Gas (1940), are no less meaningful. In terms of subject matter, he can be compared to his contemporary, Norman Rockwell, but while Rockwell exulted in the rich imagery of small-town America, Hopper depicts it in the same sense of forlorn solitude that permeates his portrayal of city life. Here too, Hopper’s work exploits vast empty spaces, represented by a lonely gas station astride an empty country road and the sharp contrast between the natural light of the sky, moderated by the lush forest, and glaring artificial light coming from inside the gas station.