Automat
New York Movie 1939
Sheridan Theater
Room in New York
Night Windows 1928
New York Office
Chop Suey
Couldn't find the title to this one.
Nighthawks 1942
Early Sunday Morning
Chair Car
Western Motel
Gas 1940
House By the Railroad
Rooms For Tourists 1945
Summer Evening
Rooms By The Sea
Cape Cod Morning 1950
The Long Leg
Blackhead, Monhegan
Road in Maine 1914
High Noon
Edward Hopper (1882 - 1967) was an American Realist painter born in Nyack, then a small town in a beautiful area near the Hudson River in upstate New York. He worked in oils, watercolor and was also expert in printmaking and etching. He was trained as an illustrator first, then studied at The New York School of Art under Ashcan School painter, Robert Henri. He also studied in Europe. To read much more about Hopper and his life and work, please use the link I've attached to his name.
Hopper is known for his night scenes, his studied used of light, his odd points of view, but most of all, I think for his natural ability to portray isolation and loneliness in a way that almost glorifies them. At least, to my eye.
Another aspect of his paintings which I find fascinating is the utter silence of his work, how his paintings capture a moment in time without movement of any sort. It's almost as if the figure or figures are trapped in amber. Even his scene of the sailboat in the water - The Long Leg - is a moment of absolute stillness.
In fact, the only painting above that shows me any motion at all, is the landscape Blackhead, Monhegan. Here the cliff and rocks and even the sea are absolutely churning.
To read even more and view some of Hopper's many paintings, please use this link.
"No artist has painted a more revealing portrait of twentieth-century America. But he was not merely an objective realist. His art was charged with strong personal emotion, with a deep attachment to our familiar everyday world, with all its ugliness, banality, and beauty."
Lloyd Goodrich
Edward Hopper - Self Portrait
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