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Edward Hopper

Biography

Edward Hopper (1882-1967) was born in New York. Hopper studied art at the Chase School in New York becoming a late follower of the Ashcan School and worked with a fairly dark and sombre palette. However after a stay in Paris, he returned to the United States with a considerably lighter and brighter palette. .

Hoppers subject is America from its most everyday and ordinary: to his specific motifs of old houses, city and village streets, diners, lighthouses, movie theatres. Hopper ads a adds a characteristic romanticism to his paintings. His work has a dreamlike quality and hints of the wish for something extraordinary that is also found in the heroes and heroines of Sinclair Lewis' early novels: his paintings are as stark as Main Street. He achieves this dream quality by his use of lighting, sometimes fading, sometimes spotlighted, and sometimes contrasting clarity and darkness of effect. Life may be drab, but it retains the memory of, or the hope for, excitement and poetry. Edward Hopper's recognition came late, but it included an honorary university degree and the Gold Medal of the National Institute of Science and Letters, as well as acceptance by both critics and general public. Edward Hopper belongs to the group of American realists