Edward Hopper (1882-1967) was born in Nyack, New York in 1882 to a middle class family. He went to school to become a commercial artist but eventually transferred to another school to pursue the study of Fine Art. He studied with two very well known American artists, William Merit Chase and Robert Henri, the latter is considered a pioneer of the American realist movement. It took seven long years for Hopper to complete his studies at the New York School of Art. In 1906 he left for the mecca of all artists at that time, Paris. He claimed the trip had little or no effect on his painting but he was certainly influenced by the Impressionists and their love of light. He spent months traveling through Europe and made several trips back to tour the great art museums of the Netherlands, Germany, England, and Belgium.
Hopper’s success as a painter in America was not immediate nor overnight. In fact, he didn’t sell his first painting until 1913 and didn’t have his first solo exhibition until 1920. Hopper is an anomaly in the world of early to mid-20th-century painting in America. He uses the light of the impressionists combined with a unique knack for subtle and powerful symbolism. In an early painting, Railroad Train, (1908), Hopper places the horizon line on an angle to increase the sense of speed already implied with the stream of smoke that crosses the entire canvas. When squinted at properly, this composition is made up of horizontal bands of color with the yellow ground mirroring the color of the yellow smoke.
House by the Railroad (1925) is one of my favorite Hopper paintings. But what does it mean? The house is a grand old style house with many stories and gables. But where is the entrance to the house? While the light glows on the left side of the house, it is devoid of any sign of human life. And the viewer’s path to the house is blocked by the railroad track. The house is also literally cut off at the bottom by the railroad track. Or is it growing out of the track? This painting seems simple enough at a first glance but a longer linger suggests deeper meaning and many unanswered questions.
Compare the House by the Railroad to New York, New Haven, and Hartford, 1931. They share similar themes of houses behind railroad tracks and there is no human presence. The steep light from the right glows and becomes the subject of significance in this painting as in the one above.
Freight Car at Truro is a watercolor painting that looks as if it was done on site and quickly. It represents a lone freight car tipped slightly precariously on the track. The cross shape of the power line is also leaning slightly left which puts adds to the illusion of the tipping freight car. He uses the foreshortened train and the direction of the track to also point us in the direction of the power line in the distance. It features the characteristic light that is Hopper’s trademark as well as a sad loneliness about the subject matter.
Chair Car is of the interior of a passenger train. Hopper uses the perspective of the train to pull us into the seemingly cathedral like space of this train interior. The light on the side of the windows and floor create a balance of yellow and green light and color. And even though his train is populated, none of these humans are interacting with each other. Compartment C, Car 293 shows a solitary woman reading inside a train car. Her face is mostly hidden by a very stylish hat and she chooses to sit on the aisle, not by the window. It is also an unusual composition with the roof section of the train creating an inverted triangle shape that seems to point to the little electric light that is on the wall. Is our mystery woman waiting for someone to take the space next to her? An interesting note: Hopper used his wife Jo as his model for most of his figurative paintings.
The El Station appears to have been painted quickly and perhaps plein air (in the air or outside) like some Impressionists preferred to work. And the railroad tracks separate us from a lone human across the tracks. Here the train station and tracks all merge together into one architecture, with the bright light cascading off the roof and chimneys of the building across the way. While The Circle Theatre has no raking side light to give it characteristic Hopper Light it does feature his use of symbolic alienation. The subway architecture blocks our path and view of the theatre. The traffic light is also red, encouraging us to go no further. The tip of the subway entrance obscures the theatre sign so that the C and E become the title clues.
There are several other examples of Hopper painting or drawing trains but perhaps his main motif or theme was the house, a possible symbol of one’s emotional dwelling. Like Hopper’s trains, Hopper’s houses are lonely, solid figures drenched with beautiful and saturated light. Hopper was a true documentarian in some ways of the trains that had become part of the American landscape. There are more train paintings and prints by Hopper, so clearly the train theme had significance for him. It’s easy to find places on the internet to see more of Hopper’s work, or better yet find a museum to see his work “in person”. His use of paint is much thicker and painterly when seen directly.
Any artist or photographer can borrow from Hopper’s imagery of isolated houses and alienated trains, but it is the glowing side light on unique American architecture that will remain forever Hopper’s great contribution to art history.
Source:
Lyons, Deborah, Edward Hopper, Adam D. Weinberg, and Julie Grau. Edward Hopper and the American Imagination. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art in Association with W.W. Norton, 1995. Print.
Mary Rayme - Mary Rayme is a graphic designer and arts educator with a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.
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