11 Things You Didn’t Know About Edward Hopper

Knowledge can be gained at any age. After having a detailed study on topics there are things unknown to us. So, we at Abirpothi present before you the lesser-known facts about artists around the world.

Edward Hopper

“Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.” —— Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper is generally considered the foremost realist painter of 20th-century America. Though Hopper also worked in etching and watercolour, he is best known for his oil paintings, which often convey a sense of melancholy or isolation. His realistic depictions of everyday urban scenes shock the viewer into recognizing of the strangeness of familiar surroundings. He strongly influenced the Pop art and New Realist painters of the 1960s and 1970s. He was known for his contrasting colours, dramatic angles, incredibly sensitive use of light, and sense of balance in every painting.

By creating sketches, Hopper could try out different representations, all of which provided information that aided the final decision-making process. Another one of Hopper\’s methods of preparation was to include detailed colour notations that would allow him to paint in his studio instead of on-site. Hopper\’s etchings signal themes the artist would explore throughout his career: isolated figures, empty streets, strong contrasts between light and shadow, and the play of sunlight on architecture. Hopper was very productive throughout his career, producing such important works as Automat, Chop Suey, New York Movie, Girlie Show, Nighthawks, Hotel Lobby, Morning in a City, and Hotel by a Railroad. The influence of his distinctive style is felt to this day, extending beyond painting into photography, film, and popular culture.

11 lesser-known facts about Edward Hopper

1. He was initially trained as a commercial illustrator.
2. His height and skinny physique, which had earned him the nickname “Grasshopper” from derisive classmates, reinforced his individualistic mindset.

   

3. He carried a quote from Goethe in his wallet which says “The beginning and end of all literary activity is the reproduction of the world that surrounds me by means of the world that is in me, all things being grasped, related, recreated, molded and reconstructed in a personal form and an original manner.”

   

4. Hopper’s painting, House by the Railroad, depicts a Dickensian house looming over a railway, and went on to inspire Hitchcock’s ominous Bates Hotel in Psycho.
5. The Whitney holds the largest collection of Hopper\’s work.
6. Hopper was also particularly inspired by the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the 19th-century American writer and philosopher. Some critics see an Emersonian influence in Hopper’s Notes on Painting, from 1933.

   

7. His depiction of female figures is largely based on his wife Josephine Nivision Hopper.
8. Hopper spent most of the time he was out of his studio, located in Washington Square, New York observing and drawing scenes of cafes and streets, as well as watching opera and theater.
9. The work ‘House by the Railroad‘, a painting created in 1925, was the first work acquired by the newly open to the public, Museum of Modern Art.

   

10. Hopper was infatuated with film and often went on week-long movie binges.
11. There are 53 surviving preparatory sketches of Hopper for his celebrated picture New York Movie (1939), now in the collection of MoMA.