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Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper(July 22, 1882 - May 15, 1967) was an American
painter and printmaker. His works represented light as it is
reflected off of familiar objects. While most popularly known for
his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and
printmaker in etching.
New York to a prosperous dry-goods merchant, Hopper studied
illustration and painting in New York City at the New York
Institute of Art and Design. 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. Hopper studied under Henri for ten
years.
Upon completing his formal education, Hopper made four trips to
Europe to study the emerging art scene there, but unlike many of
his contemporaries who imitated the abstract cubist experiments,
the idealism and detail of the realist painters resonated with
Hopper. His early projects reflect the realist influence with an
emphasis on colour and shape. Eschewing the usual New England
subjects of seascapes or boats, Hopper was attracted to Victorian
architecture, although it was no longer in fashion. According to
Boston Museum of Fine Arts curator Carol Troyen, "He really liked
the way these houses with their turrets and towers and porches and
mansard roofs and ornament cast wonderful shadows. He always said
that his favorite thing was painting sunlight on the side of a
house."
While he worked for several years as a commercial artist, Hopper
continued painting with moderate success yet not as much as he
yearned for. He sold a variety of small prints and watercolors to
tourists and minor publication yet received only a casual if warm
response from curators and gallery owners.[2] According to Troyen,
Hopper's "breakthrough work" was The Mansard Roof, painted in 1923
during Hopper's first summer in Gloucester, MA. His former art
school classmate and later wife, Josephine Nivison Hopper,
suggested he enter it in the Brooklyn Museum annual watercolor
show, along with some other paintings. The Mansard Roof was
purchased by the museum for its permanent collection, for the sum
of $100.
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 - and its inhabitants.
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.
In 1998, the United States Postal Service issued a set of 20
commemorative stamps entitled "
Four
Centuries of American Art", one of which featured Edward Hopper's
"Nighthawks"
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