Edward Hopper was an American realist painter born in 1882. He studied art in New York and Paris and is known for his paintings of mundane scenes depicting solitude and urban alienation. Some of his most famous works include Nighthawks, Automat, and Morning Sun. Hopper often portrayed solitary figures, usually women, in interior scenes with stark lighting coming through windows. His paintings conveyed a sense of psychological unease and examined themes of voyeurism and isolation in modern American life. Hopper was influential on filmmakers like Hitchcock and Scott and continued painting up until his death in 1967.

1. Edward Hopper
1882-1967
Born on July 22, 1882
in New York, Edward
Hopper is considered to
be one of America’s
greatest realist painters
of the twentieth century.

2. Hopper studied illustration at
the New York School of Art,
between 1900 and 1906.
In 1906 he travelled to Paris,
London, Amsterdam, Berlin and
Brussels to study works by
European artists.
Returning to New York in 1907,
he painted and worked part-
time as an illustrator for fiction
and trade magazines.

3. From 1910, Hopper spent his summers painting in rural New England, in
Gloucester and Cape Anne, Massachusetts, and in Maine.
In 1913 he moved to Washington Square, in the Greenwich Village area of
New York, which remained his permanent base.
Hopper’s subjects were derived from three main sources:
- everyday American life such as
restaurants, cafés, gas stations,
theaters, and street scenes;
- images of loneliness and detachment
where he often depicted solitary
figures (mostly women) occupied with
their own thoughts, bathed by the sun
light.
- and third, seascapes and rural
landscapes.
In 1923, with the encouragement of his wife artist Josephine Niviso, Hopper
began painting in watercolour. In 1924, he had his first exhibition to reach
critical and commercial success.

4. From 1930, Edward and Josephine (Jo) used to spend summer painting in Truro
on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where they built a home in 1934.
Many artists have cited him as influential, including Mark Rothko. His cinematic
compositions and use of light and dark made him popular with filmmakers such
as Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho , 39 Steps, Rear Window), Ridley Scott (Blade
Runner), Wim Wenders (American friend).

5. Hopper made several extended trips abroad and came under the influence
of French and European literature and culture.
The painting that apparently impressed him the most during his travels was
Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch,” which he viewed in Amsterdam.
But he would be strongly
influenced by many flemish
works, his painted women
revealing frequently a
Vermeer touch – static
figures with light coming
down from a window as if
from some heavenly source.

6. The window is in fact a recurring theme in Hopper’s paintings. It is this hint of
voyeurism linked to an acute sense of ‘being alone’ that so captures
Hopper’s twentieth century America.
Edward Hopper peered through windows into the soul of the US.
Hopper avoided sentimentality to the point of verging on detachment.
He painted mundane places and ordinary people doing ordinary things, and
powerfully revealed an essential disquiet in that existence.

7. The characters in Nighthawks are not going anywhere; loneliness and desolation is
Nighthawks
expressed by the presence of anonymous, non-communicating figures.
We feel the emptiness created by the massive dark window,

8. The famous work might be a manifesto of the film noir aesthetic.

10. “Room in New York” (1932)

11. A couple in their living room observed through the open window of a city
apartment. The pair are separated by space both physical and psychological.
Disquietness shows in the angle of the woman’s starkly lit shoulder as she
turns away to plunk a solitary note on a piano.

12. Compartment C,
Car 293
1938
Hopper would make the
crossed legs of a female
subject the brightest spot
on an otherwise dark
canvas in a number of later
paintings.
Hitchcock, a great admirer
of Hopper, was influenced
by this picture in a scene of
39 Steps.

13. Reading is also a frequent theme in Hopper: many of his
women have a book in hands. Maybe they don’t really read.

14. 39 Steps
Hitchcock inspired in Hopper: Madeleine Carroll reads, her legs crossed

15. The female subject of his 1931 painting Barber Shop is also in a
similar pose:
The coulours, the shades, the angled light bathing the woman, all
remind of Vermeer famous paintings.

17. Hotel room,
1931
Nothing left,
but to read?

18. Morning Sun (1952): solitude

19. Edward Hopper's wife, Josephine Hopper, served as his model for Morning Sun.

20. Hopper’s work conveys a psychological uneasiness pervasive in modern society

21. “Night Windows” (1928)

22. “Night Windows” caused
controversy: it shows the
rounded corner of an
apartment as if seen from a
passing elevated train. The
illuminated interior is seen
through three windows.
A rounded woman in a
translucent red slip, her
back to the observer and
half-obscured by the central
window, is captured slightly
bent over as if putting
something on an unseen
chair.

23. Automat, 1927
Hopper's wife, Jo, served as
model for the woman.
The restaurant appears to be
empty, no signs of any life on
the street outside.
This sense of loneliness was
associated with the concept
of urban alienation.
The woman’s reflection is absent from the window.
Is she real?

25. Chop Suey,
1929
Close attention
to the effects
of light

26. “Hopper is always on the verge of telling a story."
John Updike.

27. Thw work is figurative, but many
geometric elements surround the
human figures, like the light and blue
surface from outside through the
window.

28. Tables for ladies, 1930
This time we look
from the street into
a restaurant’s front
window – more like
in Nighthawks.
Some influence of
dutch painters can
be found in the two
females , one in
white, one in black.

29. A message of sensuality mixed with melancholy.

30. Sunday
1926
Sunday, the owner or the employee of a small store is waiting for customers.
The street is empty and indifferent. He is looking to nowhere. He is inside his
working time but he is not working.
Hopper, it seems, calls our attention to that: when we are not working we are
left empty. We feel empty of ourselves.

32. ‘Pennsylvania Coal Town’, 1947

33. He is outside of his life, his home, but still nearby – he is in a similar situation as the
man in Sunday. He is in between what his life is and himself.
He is here, near his house, and he is not – he is looking somewhere else.
What is he looking at? The gaze of the man, it seems, like in the Sunday painting, is
directed at somewhere that is nowhere: he sees something without being
interested in what he sees.

34. Office in a small city, 1953
Straight geometry adds to the impersonal atmosphere of the office, and further helps
to create a feeling of containment and solitude.
Bare windows, frames, a solitary person with an undefinite look, empty streets and
façades shining in early morning sunlight.

35. High Noon, 1949

36. Blazing with all the brightness of summer, a solitary woman stands framed in
the doorway of a lonely house somewhere on the American prairie. She has
just opened her robe, and she looks up into the sunlight that falls on her bare
breasts, trapped on the threshold, neither outside nor in.
We have a sense that this isn’t a real house at all; it’s as artificial as a movie
set. This place is truly in the middle of nowhere.

37. Summertime, 1943

38. Cape cod evening, 1939

39. Cape Cod Evening should be idyllic: the couple enjoy the evening
sunshine outside their home. But the door is firmly shut and the windows
covered, the thick, sinister trees tap on the window panes.

40. Landscapes

41. House by the Railroad, 1925

42. Hitchcock’s Psycho

43. Captain Upton’s House, 1927

44. Gas, 1940

45. The last car seems to have passed long ago, the gas station has the
appearance of a last outpost.
The bright, almost pure white fluorescent light in the gas station, in
contrast, is almost painful to look at.

46. Wim Wenders
Street Corner
(Butte,
Montana), 2003
Photography
‘Vermeer was my biggest hero, then later on it was definitely Hopper’.
Wim Wenders

47. Later works
Hopper’s later work became less sensuous, more
geometric and deliberately surreal.

48. Sea Watchers ,1952

49. Study for Sea watchers

50. Sunlight on Brownstones , 1956

51. Study for Sunlight on Brownstones

52. Western Motel, 1957

53. Sunlight in a cafeteria, 1958
A window again, shadows and light, lonesome people
‘Her eyes, unsettled, investigate the skin on her arm as her coffee grows cold’

54. Sun in an empty room, 1963

55. Rooms by the sea, 1951 – a study of light, a surrealistic approach.

56. Edward Hopper died on May 15,
1967 in his studio in New York City.
Jo, who died 10 months later, left
their collection of over three
thousand works to the Whitney
Museum of American Art.

57. This presentation ©Mário Ricca, 2012