Edward Hopper Study with James Glisson, Curator of Contemporary Art
June 3rd, 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic, click here.
(video 5:40)
Edward Hopper
American, 1882-1967
November, Washington Square, 1932, 1959 (sky added)
oil on canvas
34 1/8 × 50 1/4 in.
SBMA, Gift of Mrs. Sterling Morton
1960.64
Edward Hopper, Self Portrait, 1925-30, Oil on canvas, 25x20 in.,Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC.
COMMENTS
Edward Hopper is known primarily as a realist painter of his surroundings. He first rented his New York studio at 3 Washington Square North in late December 1913, and, although he later took over additional space on the floor, he remained there until his death in 1967. Thus, his painting, November, Washington Square, begun in 1932, represents a view he knew intimately –the view directly across from his studio on the south side of Washington Square Park. In 1899, after graduating from high school in his hometown of Nyack, New York, Hopper commuted daily to New York City to study illustration, which his parents insisted offered a more secure income than painting. The next year he enrolled at the New York School of Art, where he eventually studied painting with William Merritt Chase, Kenneth Hayes Miller and Robert Henri.
Hopper traveled to Europe in October 1906 in order to study the great masters. Upon his return the following August, he worked for an advertising agency three days a week to support himself while painting. After two additional trips abroad in 1909 and 1910, he took a studio in New York, but continued to live with his parents and sister in Nyack commuting daily for the next several years.
When Hopper’s new neighbor Walter Tittle returned from a Christmas visit home to Ohio in January 1914, he learned that the adjoining studio was occupied by his former classmate, who, like himself, was now a struggling artist and illustrator. Tittle, recalling that Hopper was then preoccupied with French subject matter and style, noted of Hopper: "for a considerable period his principle product consisted of occasional caricatures in a style smacking of both Degas and Forain, and drawn from memories of his beloved Paris."
By February 1915, when he exhibited in a group show at the MacDowell Club of New York, the negative critical reception that his monumental painting Soir Bleu of about 1914 had received as a French "fantasy" contrasted with the praise his New York Corner (well known today as Corner Saloon) received as a perfect visualization of New York atmosphere." The growing tide of cultural nationalism encouraged Hopper to turn to his immediate surroundings for his subject matter. By the late 1920’s, he was repeatedly praised for the "Americanness" of his paintings.
Hopper noted in his ledger that November, Washington Square was "Painted in New York studio about 1932 or 1934" and that the "sky (was) added in June 1959"; he also indicated "Colors and canvas unknown, probably zinc white." The delay in finishing painting the sky, caused by Hopper’s anxiety about ruining a picture, happened more often with his watercolors. Sometime, as in his watercolor, Cabin, Charleston, South Carolina (1929), included in the Hopper bequest to the Whitney Museum of American Art, he failed to find either the courage or the time to complete the sky. Until the end of his life, even after much success, Hopper remained vulnerable to critical evaluations of his work. Comments less than enthusiastic probably provoked lingering feelings of self-doubt left over from years of struggling for recognition. Late in life Hopper remarked of artists: "Ninety per cent of them are forgotten after they’re dead."
Although there is not a group of preparatory sketches for November, Washington Square, there is one closely related drawing entitled Washington Square and Judson Towers, which Hopper liked well enough to give to his friend Mrs. John O. Blanchard. On the back of a reproduction of this drawing from the Nebraska Art Association Annual Exhibition catalogue of 1959, Jo Hopper noted "This drawing done from Was.Sq.N. roof." Thus, the similar view in the painting could also be seen from the roof of the Hoppers’ home. In 1932, the year Hopper remembered beginning this canvas, he and Jo took over additional space on their floor in 3 Washington Square North.
The view from his roof, and from two windows, in his apartment, is down across Washington Square Park to the Judson Memorial Church, built during the last decade of the nineteenth century. Hopper depicted the church’s square bell tower topped with a cross dramatically silhouetted against the sky. In the foreground of his painting, a tree, left bare by winter, provides a striking counterpoint on the lower left of the composition. Hopper made the composition of this painting more effective than that of his related drawing by eliminating the distracting edge of the roof and its protuberances and focusing directly on the view itself. He often painted views from his roof in the city, and occasionally made watercolors from rooftops while traveling, such as those in Saltillo, Mexico,
painted in 1946.
Hopper especially liked painting architectural forms and capturing the drama of light and shadow. He stated that he had disliked having to illustrate because he had to draw people "grimacing and posturing" when "What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house."
The Hoppers were proud to be living under the same roof where so many celebrated figures had passed, including Ernest Lawson and William Glackens of The Eight e.e. Cummings, John Dos Passos Rockwell Kent, and Thomas Eakins. All of these feelings must have gone into Hopper’s thought when he chose to paint this view from his house. He chose November, the month he and Jo usually returned from a long summer spent on Cape Cod. His decision to present this busy city square deserted indicated his preference for the quiet calm of early morning when introspective thought could best be entertained.
Gail Levin
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Edward Hopper was born July 22, 1882, in Nyack, New York, to Elizabeth Griffiths Smith and Garrett Henry Hopper. After studying illustration in New York, Hopper, between 1906 and 1910, traveled on three different occasions to Europe, where it was Impressionism and not the more recent avant-garde movements that had the greater effect on his art. He was enthralled by the quality of light he found in Impressionist works. As he later commented: I’ve always been interested in light – more than most contemporary painters."
Until 1924 Hopper earned his living as a commercial illustrator for books and by publishing in periodicals such as Sunday Magazine, Adventure, and Scribners’. His 1918 poster, Smash the Hun, completed as a competition piece for the United States Shipping Board, won Hopper a first prize and his first national acclaim as an artist. He also did posters for the movies and the American Red Cross.
Hopper exhibited in the Armory Show of 1913 and sold his first painting, an oil, for $250. It was soon after this that Hopper moved into his Washington Square North studio. In 1915 a friend and fellow illustrator, Martin Lewis, taught Hopper how to etch, and until 1928 Hopper did very little painting. Instead, he produced over sixty prints that Goodrich describes as his "fully mature style" where "within the limits of black and white, he finally found himself." Works from this period like Evening Wind (1921) or American Landscape (1920) exemplify Hopper’s intense vision and confrontation of subject. Zigrosser compared Hopper to Robert Frost or Thomas Eakins in his "clear sighted vision . . . integrity of character and tenacity of purpose." In 1924 Hopper married the painter Josephine Verstile. They led a quiet, solitary life devoted to work, dividing their time between New England summers and New York winters, with one trip to Mexico in the 1940’s.
Hopper depicted the American scene in a direct yet unique way. Throughout his career he repeatedly turned to representation of single figures, barren settings, and bleak architectural prospects. His concern for the poignancy of American life – especially the loneliness experienced in the American city – remained the constant. The painting of the 1950’s and 1960’s look much like the paintings done in the 1920’s, but instead of becoming banal through repetition Hopper’s view becomes one of clarity. By paring down to essentials Hopper imbues his scenes with a quality that is at once emotional and physical. As William Seitz has written: "No portrayal in art of a nation as vast and diverse as the United States can be anything but fragmentary . . . Hopper’s images ring so true because they reflect personal conviction and feeling rather than a program of social comment. The truth to which one responds is that of art distilled from life."
- Kathleen Monaghan, The Preston Morton Collection of American Art, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Katherine Harper Mead, Editor, 1981, pp. 225 - 229.