Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper

The major Twentieth Century American Realist painter Edward Hopper was born in Nyack, New York in 1882. After completing six years of study at the New York School of Art in 1906, he took a number of extended trips to Paris to paint.

Earning his living as a commercial artist in New York during his twenties and thirties, he continued to paint and exhibit his work; "Sailing", for example, was included in the Armory Show of 1913.

That same year he moved to the Greenwich Village quarters he would occupy for the rest of his life, and soon thereafter began a longtime tradition of summering on the New England coast. In 1924, when he was forty-two, every painting in his one-man show at a New York gallery was sold, and his reputation as an overnight success was firmly established. Hopper now devoted himself entirely to his art, but he was distrustful of popularity and worked slowly and methodically, completing one or two paintings a year until his death in 1967.

His work is distinguished by his enigmatic yet precise representation of the solitude inherent in urban landscapes and interiors, human relationships, the open road, and the expansive sea.

(c)1995 Graphique de France