Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography [1 ed.] 0394546644, 9780394546643

Citation preview

"

nflRIN

"^B

COUNTY FREE LIBRARY

31111015355Q74

,^—,

_.

rjtiward .

^^^.^^^

'-mjm.

.^"VK

Hopper AN INTIMATE BIOGRAPHY

Gail LeviD

FPT 4(^00

I the

In

tense,

Hopper (1882-1967),

of Kdvvard

art

whom we recognize some-

unhappy men and women, in mysterithing of our neighbors and ourselves, play out ous dramas

stripped-down spaces

silent,

in

raked by an unrelenting and revealing

—

light.

stages

These

landscapes paintings, and Hopper's equally evocative and houses, make us wonder: what kind of man had this

haunting vision, and what kind of

engendered

life

this

art.^

No

one

is

answer these questions

better qualified to

than the art historian Gail Levin, author of the major catalogue studies of Hopper's work (including the raisonne) and curator of

many

exhibitions that explored

development and cultural context. Delving deeply letters into his art and into a rich archive of unpublished

his

phy," the

now

diaries, she

and

which

man

reveals

himself

and helped

to

"An

constructs

Intimate Biogra-

the true nature and personality of

— and of the woman who shared

shape his

Hopper came from

his life

art.

a middle-class family in the

son River town of Nyack,

New

An

York.

Hud-

early gift for

drawing freed him from the maternal apron-strings to study art in New York City, and then to paint in Pans.

There he conceived an abiding

love for French culture,

enjoyed a brush with romance, and recorded

in paint his

impressions of the City of Light. Alas, these paintings were not to the taste of the America to which he returned, and for

many

years the success

won

early by his

For art school contemporaries quite eluded Hopper. illusnearly two decades he had to eke out a living as an and popular

trator for advertising

fiction

— an occupa-

tion he detested.

The

turning point came when, already past forty, he

married the

Josephine Nivison (1883-1968),

new impulse to his painting. For and Edward lived out a love-hate

gave Jo

artist

was

a

and

passionate, at times violent,

Deeply divided by temperament outgoing, and talkative as

and taciturn artistic

for

— and by

his

—

Jo

Edward wounding

forty-three years, relationship that utterly symbiotic.

was

as vivacious,

was dour, repressed,

ambitions, they nonetheless

French poetry and world

who

liter.

co-^

tempt a

for her

deep love d for the

Civic Center 760. 092 HOPPER, E Levin, Gail, 1948-

Edward Hopper an intimate biography 31111015355074 :

DATE DUE

DEMCO,

INC. 38-2931

2999

ALSO BY GAIL LEVIN Edward Hopper: A Catalogue Raisonne The Poetry of Solitude: A Tribute

to

Edward Hopper

(editor)

Theme and Improvisation: Kandins^ and the American jgi2-ig^0

Avant-garde,

(principal co-author)

Marsden Hartley

in

Bavaria

Twentieth -Century American Painting, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Hopper's Places

Edward Hopper Edward Hopper: The Art and the Artist Edward Hopper as

Illustrator

Edward Hopper: The Complete Abstract Expressionism:

Prints

The Formative Years

(co-author)

Synchromism and American Color Abstraction, igio-ig2^

ft

Arnold Newman, Edward and Jo Hopper Arnold Newman.

in

South Truro,

i()6o.

Photograph

©

igy4,

[ An

Intimate Biography

KHIl LFVIN

\%

Alfred A.

Knopf NewYorf^ 7995

A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF,

THIS

IS

Copyright

©

INC.

7995 by Gail Levin

Library of Congress

All rights reserved under International and

Cataloging-in -Publication Data

Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Pub-

Levin, Gail, [date]

lished in the United States by Alfred A.

Knopf,

Edward Hopper

Canada

Gail Levin.

Inc.,

by

New Yor\,

and simultaneously

Random House of Canada

Toronto. Distributed by

in

Limited,

Random House,

Inc.,

Frontispiece photograph

©

i^y^, Arnold

man; photograph on page ^^j

©

an intimate biography

I

ist ed.

cm.

p.

New Yor\.

—

:

ISBN 0-^^4-^466^1-4 1.

Hopper, Edward, i882-ig6j.

2.

Artists

I.

Title.

— United States — Biography.

New-

igg^, Arnold

n6^^'/.h6l48

7995

Newman. y6o\og2—dc2o

Owing to

limitations

ments for permission lished

ofspace,

all

acknowledg-

to reprint previously

95-2114

CIP

pub-

and unpublished material may be found

following the index.

[B]

Manufactured First Edition

in the

United States of America

For John Babcoct{ Van Sickle

Introduction: Truth

and Pain

x

i

The Roots of Conflict: 1 882- i8gg Defining the Talent: i8gg-igo6

Seductive Paris: igo6-igoj

3

2 7

4 9

The Ambivalent American: igoy-igio In Sea rch of a Style:

igii-igi^

84

The Detour through Etching: igi^-igi8

The Deeper Hunger: igi8-ig2j

T/jd*

Leading Lady

F/r^/ Success:

1

4 6

igi^-igi^

i

6 7

7 2

i

2 3

1

o 2

CONTENTS

/

Getting Established: ig2^-ig2y

On

8 8

Road to America: 1^28- ig2g

the

First Retrospective

to Paint:

320

Failed Odyssey: 1941

Nighthawks: 1942

the

333

348

358

Home Front:

Anxiety: 1946-194^

375

385

400

and Loss: 1948

408

Melancholy Reflection: 1949

A

Retrospective Year: /950

Mexico Again: 19^1

367

1944

The Aesthetic Divide: 194^

Illness

307

19^9

The War Begins: 19^0

War on

2

272

Consequences of Success: 19^6-19^8

Mexico: 194^

i

and the Truro House: 19s 3- ^93 5

Intellectual Self-Portrait

The Struggle

2

227

Recogn ition: 1930-ig^^

An

i

4 2

436

Planning Reality: 7952

445

i

283

2 5

i

via

CONTENTS

/

Reality: ig^j

4 5 5

Tat{ing Stocl{: ig^4

474

482

Personal Vision: ig^^

Time Cover Story: ig^6 Toward

494

Reconciliation: ig^y-ig^8

Excursion into Philosophy: ig^g

Protest:

ig6o

Prints Again:

529 igGi-igGi

543

Last Rehearsal: 1^6^-1^64

Final Curtain: 7965-/967

Bibliographical Notes

Notes

583

Acknowledgments Index

5 8

647

645

554 569

i

508

520

^^

Hi

TRUTH IN

PHIN

THE LAST DECADE

of her

books: one on Arthur, her alley cat,

Hopper was planning to writc two strayed some thirty years before, and one }o

life,

on Edward, her husband. "Some day T'm going

ward Hopper," she can do

it.

told

whole

story.

Jo's

story of

It's

He

Ed-

"No one

else

an interviewer, adding with emphasis,

The man from The New

but finally gave up.

to write the real story of

YorJ^er

wanted

to

do

a Silhouette

of Eddie,

never get the

just couldn't get the material. You'll

pure Dostoevsky. Oh, the shattering bitterness!"'

boast was a feint to intimidate the inquirer. She never wrote "the real

Edward Hopper." But through

the years,

from the early 1930s

until

her eyesight failed not long before she died in 1968, she did keep diaries.

Often she wrote to express herself

She told of her frustration just like

dropping

bottom."^ poseful.

day,

As time

She began

March

Rorschach see too

at his silence:

passed, the entries to

imagine

much,

it

doesn't

became more

a future audience.

Envisioning a prospective reader

Jo verified suddenly: "This

fill

side

chamber

conversation.

"Sometimes talking with Eddie

a stone in a well except that

On

thump when

introspective a

is

hits

and pur-

some enigmatic

who might

no emotional

it

page dated Wednes-

29, 1950, a grea*: blot of ink stands out like

test.

ink bottle to

when Edward shunned

crisis

be tempted to

—

just reversing

for filling fountain pen."^

/

XI

EDWARD HOPPER

/

On a typical day, Jo began by complaining of her week shut in

New

Read Reader Dig. & Radio out of tune

Yorker

too. E. has

.

.

with

;.„

a cold:

not like reading a fine book

.

made such

sketches at a burlesque

&

is

juggling with advisability of attempting a canvas, but wants to see

more

things

clearly

fore starting off.

&

reads

me

bits

bed anymore

Ed

—wants

to

make

sure he

reading a translation of Paul Valerie Criticism

is

on Beaudelaire & Stendahl. E. does not want

—wants

to

up & then

sit

leaps

vitamins he's taking Benzarine, Cebeose

up and

really interested be-

is

Never wants

read, read, read.

&

up at 7

—must be

Bottalin.

to talk

.

.

.

to

go

places, but

I

do

passing of hours, days, weeks,

the

to

those

about anything. Try it.

Not

like to look at people or discuss

stances as they are, not like him, a clout with

Not only

all

go

E wants to sit

devise ways of making our lives gayer, "richer" D. calls

need

to

to

that

I

circum-

no consciousness of the

lives."*

man from The New Yorker pursued

in vain the secrets

of life

chez Hopper. Would-be chroniclers multiplied as Edward's reputation grew.

The

Jo. She made way of those who hoped

invaders had to confront not only his storied reticence but

herself notorious for the obstacles she threw in the to write

about her husband. Purposefully, energetically, and with

his full

complicity, she engineered his legend as a recluse. All the while, she kept

fill-

ing the diaries with the detailed personal record that would permit the kind

of biography both she and he approved. In their opinions about the requirements for biography, the couple con-

verged for once. Jo was defying an outsider could

"the real story."

tell

artists' lives

in a i960 interview

sively

with the

nerve.

He

I

openness to

—

all is

a tribute to

of

artists

jumped spell

would be

valuable." Evidently she touched a

to set her straight

and pushed on with uncharac-

out a tenet of his faith about

their character

—whether weak

He once explained

to

didn't

The man's

mean

the work.

that,

and

same thought years

it is

in the art

was

a

theme Hopper

Selden Rodman: "Originality

of inventiveness nor method

deeper than

art: "I

that.

or strong, whether emotional

Some-

come out of nothing."^

The importance of the man ter

Katharine Kuh. She provoked him

written by people very close to them.

thing doesn't

peatedly.

off another outsider and asserted that

by claiming he had "suggested that a book dealing exclu-

lives

virtually

meant with

or cold

she claimed that only she

should be "written by people very close to them." That Hopper

expressed his opinion at

teristic

Edward put

when

—

in particular a fashionable

the essence of personality."^

earlier at a

moment

is

stressed re-

neither a mat-

method.

It is

Hopper had voiced

far

the

of personal triumph. In 1933, for the

Truth and Pain catalogue of his

first

retrospective at the

Museum

beheve that the great painters, with their force this unwilling tions.

medium

find any digression

I

conviction surfaced again

to be the best

of Modern Art, he wrote:

"I

have attempted

to

intellect as master,

of paint and canvas into a record of their emo-

from

this large

aim leads

when Hopper was asked do not

certain subjects over others: "I

them

xiii

I

mediums

exactly

me

to boredom."'^

to explain

know, unless

for a synthesis of

my

why that

it is

The

he chose I

believe

inner experience."^

This belief in the personal grounding of his art links Hopper to the con-

mode

fessional

of certain writers

among

his contemporaries.

through

his

work

suggests analogies with

what occurs

particularly in writers like Marcel Proust, all

of

whom Hopper

and uneasy figures itual crisis

manner

in

Hopper,

read.

too,

is

modern

in

literature,

Thomas Mann, and Andre

Gide,

one of the disaffected. His lonely

everyday situations and

within the framework of

Hopper belongs

His search for personal expression

to the tradition of spiritual autobiography.'^

common settings suggest "spir-

realistic characters, real places" in the

typical of modernism."^'

Believing in art as a

medium

for inner experience.

Hopper

naturally

away whenever pressed to comment on the content of his own work. To speak would have risked putting his innermost emotions on display. Many an shied

interviewer was sent packing in frustration.

and

persistent partisan,

per's

work, was kept

at

Even Lloyd Goodrich,

his early

who organized two retrospective exhibitions of Hoparm's length.

Hopper's defenses were more subtle in the case of the chronicler

at

home.

He knew perfectly well that Jo was keeping diaries. She made no secret of the fact. They were enough of a fixture in her life to provoke his teasing. An ironic attack

dahl" that

on

diarists

Edward

comes

in just those bits

about "Beaudelaire and Sten-

chose to read her from the essays by Valery.

It

must have

been with a certain sardonic glee that he purveyed to the house diarist

marks

like the following:

The

authors of confessions or memoirs or private diaries are invari-

ably taken in by their

dupes of such dupes. sent;

we know

us about else

who

It is

desire to shock;

more

never one's self that anyone wants to pre-

is.

really true,

confesses

which

little

to tell

He therefore writes the confessions of somebody

impressive, purer, blacker,

and ever more himself than

Anyone who

and we ourselves are the

perfectly well that a real person has very

what he is

own

is

is

is

livelier,

more

permissible, for the self has

a liar

and

is

sensitive,

its

degrees.

running away from what

something null or shapeless and,

is

in general,

blurred. But every confession has an ulterior motive: fame, scandal,

an excuse, or propaganda.''

re-

EDWARD HOPPER

xiv

/

Wicked Edward! Poor Valery ascribed. So

Yet she gives

Jo!

much

sign of the ulterior motives

little

of what she wrote impressed not even herself. She

never rereads and regroups, focuses and builds. Even in the end, she took no

The

thought to arrange, preserve, or publish.

The

old metal box. ple

were found stored

diaries

in

an

writing served as an outlet for that desire to "look at peo-

and discuss circumstances" which she found

no consciousness" of a husband. Her

chatter,

so lacking in her "clout with

day

in

and day

some

out, filled

of the emptiness and sometimes vented the bitterness and pain. Protective as

Hopper was about his

the prospects of later fame for

artists:

privacy in

he was skeptical about

life,

"Ninety percent of them are forgotten

more than

ten minutes after they're dead."'" Nevertheless, his lack of

ironic

awareness of Jo's diaries goes beyond mere generic diffidence. Edward could not imagine that anything Jo produced might have a significant impact. Yet the diaries a

grew

importance

in

foreword during a

trip

in

such an effusion, only

been written &

think

I

it

God

will not please

will be

him

to write

"Record of a woman's

his response:

wandering mind & wandering thru the U.S. & Mex. There tification for

Edward

her mind. She even asked

and recorded

is

no excuse or

jus-

allowed to see what has there

greatly."'^

Secure in his

own

sar-

donic humor, he took for granted that the diaries would have no interest and

Not

man

no

real public.

let

alone censor, what she might choose to record.

she provided the

the last

means

underestimate

someone

for

"the real story of Edward

to

to discover

Jo,

he

He

what

Hopper" reckoning with

felt

left it

no need

the

to

know,

way open and

would

entail to

tell

the viewpoint of someone

really "very close."

By way of

story material, the diaries offer long

repetitive stretches of daily

movements or

inaction, but then

paintings planned or executed together appear, and the

meant by "emotional

crisis"

—

The

passions and conflicts

interviewers and friends.

As

unique

facts like

moments of what

she

the bursts of resentful hurt. Often facts can be

checked and corroborated, sometimes through cussed the couple.

and often tiresomely

years

wore on,

letters in

which intimates

came through only

Jo

dis-

too often to

would pause more and more

frequently to look back and take stock. By and large her recollections, too,

now and

turn out to have been reliable, although

then she confused dates or

confiated events. Reliability, bolstered by repeated verifications, lends credibility to the rest.

The

general reliability of the diaries

sence, even willful destruction, of

temporaries were

left to

nearly eighty-five.

No children

on both ments

sides

were

to history by

many

is

be interviewed

childless

resulted

and

especially

welcome, given the ab-

other sources of evidence.

when Hopper

Few

con-

died in 1967, aged

from the marriage. The

already dead. But these are

comparison with what happened next.

sole siblings

minor impedi-

Truth and Pain

At Edward's death, ing her

own

go

his art

Jo inherited everything. Virtually blind,

death, she was in

ill,

and

fac-

no condition to alter her husband's wish that

Whitney Museum of American

to the

XV

I

Art.

native, she included in the bequest the bulk of her

Lacking

a viable alter-

own work

as well, al-

though she disliked and distrusted the Whitney. To Lloyd (joodrich personally, she willed the record

books of Edward's work she had kept metic-

ulously for years.

Comprising more than three thousand paintings, drawings, watercolors, and prints of Edward's alone,

seum by March

surprise.

when

19, 1971,

tire artistic estate

to say

a

Whitney

of the

late

press release

announced the

Edward Hopper"

gift

of "the en-

collectors

market

and other museums

eventually."''^

Jo's

asset

for the future of the bequest soon appeared.

Goodrich, the museum's advisory director, told The

want

until

—with no mention of

work. The Whitney's director, John L H. Baur, called the collection "an

beyond valuation." Plans

mu-

nothing of Jo's, the bequest took the

Almost three years passed from the time of Jo's death

have access to

to

Denouncing as

a scandal this

New it,

Yor\ Times,

so we'll put

it

"We

on the

"contemplated disposal of

Hopper bequest," the Times critic Hilton Kramer characterized the museum as "a major institution suffering from ... a feeble sense of its own identity and purpose." Kramer accused the Whitney of trying to destroy the value of the bequest as a permanent archive.'^ Baur retorted that the Whitney had the

itself

not yet reached a decision on what part of the bequest

Some

up by Lloyd Goodrich

as late as

drawings

selling twenty-five

it

would

drawings during the 1920s

June

6,

—even

at the

1974, indicates that

A

keep.'^'

drawn he recommended

including etchings and watercolors.

sales did take place,

list

though Hopper had produced these

museum's forerunner,

the

Whitney Studio

Club. Eventually, under the pressure of intense public scrutiny and growing indignation, the

The

museum

stopped selling items from the bequest.

controversy over sales only scratched the surface of disregard for the

nature and value of the bequest as a permanent archive. lic

record gives no hint of the

began when finition, a

I

started

full

work on

extent of history's

To

loss.

this

day the pub-

My own

awareness

a catalogue raisonne of Hopper in 1976.

By de-

catalogue raisonne employs methodical scholarship to gather and

form

digest in systematic

Beginning the project

all

at the

that can be

known

museum, I expected

of an

artist's

to find

work and

life.

Hopper's papers,

in-

cluding the letters he kept, the photographs, books, and phonograph records that he

and

his wife

tural activity.

anyone rectly

else

I

owned:

in short the

searched in vain. Soon

I

evidence of his intellectual and cullearned that neither Goodrich nor

from the museum had sought

from Jo

after

Edward's death,

The opportunity had been missed

to

to obtain this material, either di-

or, later,

from the executor of her

estate.

conserve basic materials for a history of

EDWARD HOPPER

and

the artist

his production. This, despite the fact that in 1964 Jo

Whitney

the subject of "pack rats" to Margaret McKellar of the

when

museum was producing

the

hibition during

Edward's

life:

—when

mother gave them

might not

me. She

a

pack

with

Of

course

I

keep

mother from French people

E.

such a very good boy in 1906. His

rat too."'^

the dearth of expected documents, a different lack began

emerge. In going through the Hopper collection, Edward's.

as well as

time

like to be associated

antiquarian.

letters to his

in Paris to say E.

to

Compounding to

rats

—however honorably —

the Rat Family even

wrote on

at the

the catalogue for the last retrospective ex-

"Pack

everything from way, way back stayed with

xvi

/

I

had read James Mellow's

I

expected to see

Jo's art

article in the Times, describ-

ing canvases by Jo in the bequest as "generally pleasant, lightweight works: flowers, sweet-faced children, gaily colored scenic views. "'*^ But ing. his

and the

I

Dealing with the bequest, Baur naturally looked for advice

immediate predecessor

Goodrich,

and Hopper's recognized interpreter

as director

Together Baur and Goodrich rejected

friend.

found nothto

Jo's

work

unworthy of

as

museum. They arranged for some of her paintings to be given away; they rest. They saw no need to invest even in archival pho-

simply discarded the

now

tographs. Ironically, the only paintings from this group that can traced are four that

Hoppers

for years

went

to

New

be

York University, which had troubled the

with efforts to evict them from their home.

all,

only three works by Jo were added to the Whitney's permanent

collection.

None was ever exhibited. All three had disappeared by the time I in 1976. None has ever turned up. Others managed to escape de-

In

began work

few of Jo's drawings,

struction by passing as Edward's: these included a eral early small oil paintings, as his. late

and some watercolors,

As curator of the Hopper

John Clancy,

This picture,

to give the

collection,

museum

Edward painted by Jo. Hopper at the museum, has never

collection.

and drawings are known only by photographs lifetime.

The

sole survivors are a

The men cance, but not

at the all

her, Brian

the

Whitney took

who

also

became

bones about the tension

women in the

Today, most of Jo's paintings that she

had taken during her

for granted that Jo's

any

Her

work had no

qualities

Verstille

artist

marriage:

Concerning

Nivison Hopper was one of

ever married."''^

"He and

signifi-

had not escaped

a friend in her last years.

O'Doherty wrote, "Josephine

most extraordinary

of

few works she sold or gave away.

opinion was so shortsighted.

the one interviewer

sev-

mistakenly identified

convinced Hopper's dealer, the

a portrait

now the only mature oil by Jo

been accessioned for the permanent

I

all

He

also

made no

she were so opposed to each

other in temperament that they were a continuous source of life and dismay to

each other. Opinions are

much

divided as to her

role.

One view

holds that

Mrs. Hopper persecuted her husband. Another claims that she stung him

to

Truth and Pain life."'"

A

still

view of the

must

more

first

xvH

/

incisive estimate

exhibition from the

of Jo appeared

Hopper

in

receive considerable attention in future

O'Doherty's 1971

He

bequest.

Hopper

The

studies.

quest reveals that the sinewy, female bodies in the paintings

longed to his wife,

who devoted

re-

wrote that she

Bebe-

all

herself to insuring that her husband's

exposure to mankind in general (of which she had a low opinion)

would be kept within Josephine

with a

Hopper

farcical

woman

own

the boundaries of her

person. Since

had wit but no humor, she has hitherto been treated

indulgence which she herself invited. But she was a

of genuine

if

frustrated talents, extremely well-read,

and

at

her best a brilliant and eccentrically original conversationalist.^'

My

O'Doherty's prescription for Hopper studies proved prescient. search went on to demonstrate

Edward's. Not only did she least

how

insist

Jo's activity as

on modeling

an

artist

for his

nudes

—

that

was the

of it. She, like him, had studied painting with Robert Henri at the

York School of Art. Starting

in courtship, she

Often they used the same studio or worked suffered

from

painter's block, as frequently

into action by beginning to paint

and the laborious

first.

and he made

at the

same

in

ignored

When

he

happened, she would goad him

They shared

the routines of every day

travels north or west or south in quest of subjects.

French. With her help his career took wing.

when

New

art together.

locations.

They

sorbed and discussed the same books, plays, and films, exchanging

doux

re-

intertwined with

Her

ab-

billets-

career withered,

not discouraged by him. As she recorded and remembered, her

resentment welled up again and again. It is

time, then, to

acknowledge Jo Hopper's

role not only as her hus-

who The "whole story"

band's wife and model, but as the intellectual peer and fellow painter

both stimulated and challenged her more gifted colleague.

needs them both together. There tea parties laced

with

bitter pain.

be worthy of a tragic narrator. core of his

work and

is

her chronicle of paintings, quarrels, and

There

is

her challenge that the truth would

No less there is Edward's belief in the personal

his resulting evasive posture. Together, their testimony

suggests a story of acute anguish in personal

The

life

transmuted into gripping

art.

pain and the craft create the uncanny tension through which his paint-

ings speak. Their pictorial idiom, at once familiar

memories, hopes, uncertainties

—

and estranged, touches our

the yearning and disquiet of modern lives.

^^

TH[ ROOTS OF

MFLICT: 1lil!Hil99

THE ROOTS OF Edward Hopper reach back to the old Dutch settlements that punctuate the

The

River. ties,

where

wooded

and promontories along the lower Hudson

bluffs

conflict in his character mirrors the tension in those local

and

ogy and science and

new waves

the end of the Victorian age

communi-

opened by technol-

traditional values faced the horizons

of migration. Hopper's childhood spanned

and the dawn of the new century with

its

mo-

mentous disruptions and displacements. The decade of the i88os saw great and

scientific

social transformations:

mercial electric lights the

first

At

made

their

Hopper was born in New York. New York with

debut

telephone line would connect

the time of Edward's birth on July 22, 1882, his

counted

a

just

home town

of Nyack

population of about four thousand. Light manufacturing included

and pianos. Service industries flourished,

and

resort

development along the

Nyack was considered

was no

a healthful resort.

threat of malarial mosquitoes.

promontory of Hook Mountain offered was cut

com-

Less than a year later

lated to tourism

there

after

Chicago.

shoes, carriages,

as 1872,

weeks

in the

river.'

The

especially those re-

Incorporated as

streets

Nearby on the Hudson

a noble prospect.

late

were paved and the

At "the pond,"

winter and recreation such as boating was available

all

ice

sum-

mer. Along the river affluent captains of industry lived in elaborate Victorian elegance.

The

area had been populated primarily by people of

Dutch

extrac-

/

3

EDWARD HOPPER

4

/

when more

tion well into the 1820s,

New

began arriving from

Jersey,

settlers,

New

York

including Hopper's forebears, City,

and abroad.

When

immigrants came, they included refugees from the potato famine

Change in Nyack had begun in earnest when the railroad linked York City in 1870. Growing rail traffic in both passengers and

New

prompted an upgrading of the

it

with

freight

The improvements

country roads.

local

later

in Ireland.^

also

caused dislocation, gradually driving out of business the local steamboat lines

and the industry that remained

during Edward's boyhood, the port

built the boats. Still,

relatively prosperous

and

a thriving shipyard turned out racing

The last riverboats steamed up and down and across the Hudson. The could spend Saturdays "in the Nyack shipyards where he studied the

yachts.

lad

building and rigging of yachts with a boy's enthusiastic attention to detail," reported Alfred Barr, six

Edward

learned to

community

to gain

While rowing with and

fell

notice a

was no stunt

at the

same time

"The boys got

paper.

from

on Hackensack Creek.

a boating accident

chum, Ralph

Bedell, he attempted to take off his coat

overboard, capsizing the boat. For once his height stood him in good

stead: "It

and

interviewed Hopper in 1933.^ When only five or row on Rockland Lake, the local "pond." He went on

who

for

Edward

to stand

to lend a helping

up and keep

hand

a wetting, but no further

his

head out of water

to Ralph," reported the local

damage was

done.""* In

deeper

Edward excelled at swimming and enjoyed it all his life.^ Edward and his friends, Harold Green, Louis Blauvelt, and Harry Mac Arthur, spent much of their free time near the docks or on the river, particularly at John P. Smith's boatyard at the foot of Fourth Avenue.^ The Bapwater,

tist

minister's daughter, Lois Saunier,

coming

friends

Zee, where the

to

borrow her

remembered

father's boat.^

Hudson River broadens

Nyack, and Croton Point, ten miles Eddie and three

pals

the lanky boy

They would

sail

and

his

on the Tappan

out between Irvington, south of

to the north.^

formed the Boys' Yacht Club,

for

which he designed

plaques with the names of the members' boats: one version sported Glorianna,

Mary

M., and Bubble, which were traditionally feminine, but upbeat and in-

nocuous.*^

Edward's choice, Water Witch, telegraphs

Water-Witch, James Fenimore Cooper's 1830 novel,

his love tells

how

of books. The the "exploits,

mysterious character, and daring of the Water-Witch, and of him

who

her, were, in that day, the frequent subjects of anger, admiration, prise.

.

.

.

All

ments were ship

is

a

wondered

at the success

and

intelligence with

controlled."'^ Also, Cooper's character

seaman's mistress.""

Where

the

title

Tom

sailed

and sur-

which her move-

Tiller declares,

"A

of Edward's fantasy suggests

derring-do and mastery even in the mystery of sex, the boat he actually built

was something from

his father,

else.

At age

fifteen

he received the

wood and

but the resulting cat boat "wasn't very good,"

tools as a gift its

maker

re-

The Roots of Conflict: 1 882-1 8()g called. "I

had put the center board well too

wind very well."'" for scrap.'

Up

^

One

in the attic

he once related:

thought

am

at

interested in boats, but

The middle ter,

"I

and she wouldn't

on North Broadway, Edward

drawings

in

I

far aft

story held that the boat sank, another that

which he depicted

as the vessel of the Indians.

one time

I'd like to

it

up-

sail

was

sold

also built a canoe,

To an

interviewer

be a naval architect because

got to be a painter instead."'^

I

circumstances of Edward's immediate family were comfortably

He was

class.

the

and only

first

son, but the second child; his sole sis-

Marion Louise, had been born on August

was marked by dominance on the female

1880.

8,

Their parents' marriage

When

side.

Garret Henry Hopper,

twenty-six, married Elizabeth Griffiths Smith, twenty-three, on 1879, the

5

/

ceremony took place

March

26,

house where Elizabeth grew up and the

in the

new couple

settled there

since Garret

had no means of providing an independent dwelling. The home

under the wing of Elizabeth's widowed mother,

on North Broadway was a constant reminder that Elizabeth had married

less

Her father, John DeWint Smith, had built the house on coming to Nyack six years after their marriage in 1852. Smith

well than her mother. for his wife

had

also acquired

DeWints, owned to a

two other houses

historic houses in

who had

Edward, Martha

rived the

Griffiths

from providing

community. Her

their

age seventy-two, girl

Reverend Joseph W. Griffiths

and stuck

in the

Edward Hopper

young man

in a

foundry. In the

in his twenties

new

to

lit-

just the authority de-

home. She was the daughter of a moral force

father, the

in

Nyack

memory

still

— Lozier— when he came

as a

Hopper and grandmother

Smith wielded more than

had organized the Baptist congregation a part of family lore

French

their origin

emigrated from the Caribbean

Thomas.

In her roles as mother-in-law to Garret tle

his mother's family, the

Tappan. The DeWints traced

wealthy sugar plantation owner

island of St.

Nyack, and

in

in 1854.

(i

His story became

of his great-grandson: even

spoke of the ancestor

who

to

at

"married a

to America."'^ In fact, Griffiths

from England

in

782-1 860),

came

New York, where he worked

surroundings, Griffiths

Anglican origins for

left his

He became a Baptist, founded a Sunday School, and soon He had retired from a long career when he helped to propagate the Baptist persuasion in Nyack. The woman he married was Elizabeth Lozier, descended from Le Sueurs, Huguenots who came to

an evangelical

was

sect.

called to the ministry.

America from Dieppe

in 1657.

Their Protestant heritage led them

Dutch Reformed Church and they soon simplified recognition.'^'

Yet

when Edward remembered

their

the story, he thought of his

great-grandmother as "French," emphasizing the trace his favorite culture.

icans I'm an

Another time, he

amalgam of many

told Katharine

races.

Perhaps

to the

French name beyond

all

in his family tree

of

Kuh: "Like most Amer-

of them influenced

me

EDWARD HOPPER

/

6

me

John DeWint Smith, Edward's maternal grandfather.

Martha

Griffiths Smith,

Edward's maternal grandmother.

Dutch, French, possibly some Welsh. Hudson River Dutch

dam

—not Amster-

Dutch."^'

The namesake and granddaughter of

Elizabeth Lozier Griffiths, Ed-

ward's mother Elizabeth, was born to Martha Griffiths and John Smith in Blauvelt,

New York, before her parents moved

where

of them lived and died and where

all

to Nyack and built the house Edward grew up. Elizabeth en-

joyed the privilege of attending private school at the Rockland Female Acad-

emy. She was remembered

as "full of

generous, witty, handsome, gay of

spirit,

charm and

a

complete extrovert,

natural hostess, always full of con-

cern for friends."'^ Expressive of her feelings, she was said to "rave"

when

she was angry.''^ Elegant, feminine, yet formidable-looking, she wore her

long hair swept up in a chignon. those that

made

A

photograph shows strong features

her son a distinctive subject for portraits. He,

when

her portrait, emphasized her determined stare. Elizabeth showed her

with children

when

daughter recalled:

the

new

like

painting skill

minister arrived at the Baptist church, as his

The Roots of Conflict: i882-i8()g

Our

great favorite

was

a delightful white-haired lady

beth Hopper. As soon as

we

call

her "Auntie"

I

we became

named

7

Eliza-

acquainted, she suggested that

Hopper which we were glad

to do.

She was

such fun to be with, always ready to laugh and joke with us and take interest in a doll,

On

what we were doing. To

seemed

to give her as

the paternal side,

farmers,

more

turely, sey,

as

game of tag or

pleasure as

it

did

help us dress

us.'"

Edward's family had been prosperous traders and

exclusively Dutch.

in fifteenth-century

in 1652,

much

join a

There were Hoppen mayors and aldermen to New Amsterdam When he died premachildren went to New Jer-

Amsterdam. Andries Hoppen came

where he succeeded

aged only thirty-three,

in shipping his

and

widow and

trade.

five

where they flourished around Hackensack and Ho-ho-kus, once known

Hopper Town. Edward's great-grandfather Christian, born in Paramus on April 17, 1851. Although

married Charity Blauvelt

Elizabeth Lozier Griffiths,

Edward's maternal great grandmother.

Reverend Joseph W. Griffiths,

Edward's maternal

great-grandfather.

in

1826,

Charity's

EDWARD HOPPER parents, the cousins

Abraham

Blauvelt

(i

789-1 864) and Marie Blauvelt

(1793-1882), came from a Dutch family, they baptized their daughter in the Methodist church of Waldwick, New Jersey, turning to the evangeHcal sect

Thus the strains of a rigorous evangelical Protestantism took over from more established religious traditions in both sets of Edward's great-grandparents. The effects were felt even to the third

of EngHsh working-class

origin.^'

generation.

Evangelical austerity displaced the

Dutch

settlers in the

new world had

more

way of

festive

This

is

why Hopper emphasized that not Amsterdam Dutch."

"Hudson River Dutch

the early

kept up in the style of the old world tav-

erns of genre painters like Jan Steen. Beer and rough vorites.

life

—

games had been

fa-

he was descended from

Baptized into the sobriety

of the Methodist church. Charity Blauvelt Hopper remained a forbidding figure

all

said he it

her

life:

Edward, writing home from the

wanted no more

must be admitted

letters

relative liberty of Paris,

from such disagreeable old

that Charity's

life

ladies. In fairness,

was unlucky and hard. Her husband

Christian died on April 20, 1854, in an accident with a runaway horse their son

was only two years

New York

Unlike Andries Hoppen

City to live with her parents,

ther Blauvelt died

in the first

not leave his heirs secured. Charity took the

tion, Christian did

to

old.

when the boy was work to support

education and go to

Abraham and

when

genera-

little

Garret

Marie. ^^ Grandfa-

him to curtail widowed mother. Barred from

only twelve, forcing

his

his

his

natural talent for study, lacking the commercial knack of his ancestors, de-

Hopper

prived of paternal guidance, Garret

brought him

to

drifted until a further chance

Nyack and a strong mooring with Elizabeth Griffiths Smith. Hopper went into business in Nyack; four years later, he

In 1878 Garret

identified himself on ret ily

Edward's birth

certificate as

"Salesman. "^^ In 1890, Gar-

purchased Morris and Minnerly, a dry goods store not

home. In the shop, which became known

as

ter

from the

sold men's

fabrics

Hopper made

from the fam-

"G. H. Hopper," he sold table

linens, towels, fabrics, notions, kid gloves, hosiery,

items of clothing. Elizabeth

far

underwear, and other

dresses for herself and her

procured by her husband.

and boys' underwear may account

The

fact that

for the

young Edward's other-

wise inexplicably detailed reports on the condition of his underwear

wrote

letters

home. Garry,

as people called

fairs.

He wore

bled

Thomas G. Masaryk,

recalled.

a short, pointed

first

polite,

with a large

gracious person.

circle "^^

a

in

when he

community

af-

mustache; he resem-

president of Czechoslovakia, his son

At the end. Garret was remembered

nial disposition,

most

the

him, was active

Van Dyck beard and

daugh-

"G. H. Hopper"

as "kind-hearted

of friends."'^

He was

and of a ge-

also reputedly "the

The Roots of Conflict: i882-i8gg

I

^djWii

9

^^.{^GSL

Christian Hopper, Edward's

paternal grandfather.

Charity Blauvelt Hopper,

Edward's paternal grandmother.

Garret made every effort to Nyack Evening Journal and in the iliary at the

succeed.

He

advertised regularly in the

Fair Journal, published by the ladies' aux-

YMCA. He promoted business with periodic sales, claiming to New York City prices." (The metropolis at the other end of

offer the "lowest

the

rail line

was already undercutting

local

autonomy.)

He enlarged

his busi-

ness in April 1892, buying out his local competitor, William O. Blauvelt. But

Garret's heart forty-nine,

was not

when

in

his son

commerce.

He

closed shop about 1901, aged only

was already studying

Garret Hopper's failure to

live

up

in the city.

to his forebears' mercantile

prowess

did not undermine the household's standard of living, thanks to the inheritance of his wife,

who owned and

received rents from

mortgages on other properties. Upon Edward's birth built a

new wing onto

they enlarged the

two houses and held in 1882, the

Hoppers

the north side of their home. About two years

wing with

a

later,

second story and bay window. They frequently

redecorated, paid for repairs and yard work, and sent their laundry out to be

EDWARD HOPPER

done.

They

/

also ran charge accounts with the local grocer, butcher, baker,

confectionery, ble. In

and they hired horses and carriages from

keeping with

and

Blauvelt's Livery Sta-

employed an

this lifestyle, they also

10

maid from the

Irish

population of newer immigrants.

Comfortable circumstances permitted private school Marion, as for their mother

before."^'

Then

Liberty Street. Eddie was a prankster. classic

torment

when

in times

ion, as the elder,

Edward and

for

they went to the public school on

He dipped girls' braids in

inkwells, the

every desk in school held a supply of ink. Mar-

remembered

was

that he

when

"a dreadful tease"

when

Lois Saunier described a mortifying occasion

litde.^^

she was the Hoppers'

guest for Sunday dinner.

When we were

Marion

the table, with the daughter

opposite me.

I

Hopper was

ready to eat Auntie

had been seated on

at the

seated at one end of

Ed was

other and

a hassock

which was on

seated

a dining

room chair, a napkin tied around my neck, grace had been said and we were ready to eat. At this point Ed decided to have a bit of fun fun for him, that

is

—

curled his feet around

went down with and injuring

my

laugh so

I

under the

my

pull.

hassock and gave a quick

a bang, hitting

knew

my

for consolation but

that

the day

knowing he

Marion Hopper

him

call

else.

I

looked to Marion

that they

were trying not

as a joke, tho'

a

bad boy

him "Eddie"

was

I

truly

do such

to all

a

the rest of

also recalled that her brother "couldn't stand

spirits

I

disliked the name.^^

win every game he entered ward's high

would

she

it

Ed was

embarrassed. Auntie Hopper said thing and to punish

saw

must take

too

I

table,

Of course

chin lightly on the table's edge

more than anything

vanity

and Auntie Hopper to

so he stretched his long legs

into

—

it

if

he didn't

checkers, whatever children played.

"^"^

Ed-

paid off in schoolwork, as attested by a surviving report

card from January 1890,

when he was

only seven: he received a grade of

ninety for his numbers, but scored a perfect one hundred for geography, reading, spelling, punctuality,

and behavior,

When Edward moved up

to

for

an overall average of ninety-eight.

Nyack High School on

elementary school, he did not maintain such standards.

on the

New

York

State Regents Examinations only in

the top floor of the

He

received honors

drawing and plane

geometry. Although there were then no art classes in Nyack schools, Edward's ability to draw came in handy at least once, recalled his

sister,

stymied for words to answer a question on an exam, he illustrated pressing and satisfying his teacher.^"

won

credit for encouraging him.

No

when, it,

im-

particular teacher, however, ever

His French notebooks

attest to his diligence

The Roots

ofCorjflict:

i882-i8gg

I

II

all

his

Elizabeth Grijfiths Smith,

Edward's mother.

Garret Henry Hopper,

Edward's father.

in studying the life.

He

language that he

later

knew

well and continued to read

also studied spelling, reading, geography, writing, English, U.S. his-

tory, arithmetic, algebra,

German,

botany, zoology, and economics.

THE HOPPER FAMILY did travcl out of Nyack, taking trains and ferryboats to New York City to attend cultural events, although Nyack also had its

own

opera house and a hall for other performances.

The Hoppers even

kept scrapbooks of the operas and plays they attended. (Edward's father's

first

cousin Lillian Blauvelt was an accomplished opera singer.) Sports too interested the family.

As an

marking: "Used

to

go

Hopper took Eddie in rented

Hopper expressed some interest in baseball, regame once in a while when was a boy."^' Garret

adult, to a

to visit his relatives in

equipment

as they did not

Each August, the family spent Christian religious

I

own a

camp meetings of

Ridgewood, their

own

week on

New Jersey, traveling

horse and buggy.

the Jersey shore,

where the

the 1870s had evolved into

summer

colonies where no liquor was allowed and evangelical "surf meetings" at-

EDWARD HOPPER tracted devout crowds. In 1895,

Lodge

stayed at the Sunset

Norwood time

in

when Edward was

Ocean Grove;

Edgemere

Inn.^" Inspired

up the

just

the following year they were at

The Sunday

these trips.

of the year. Hopper's parents sent

rest

Sunday

street to the Baptist

grandfather Griffiths.

by the change of scene, as he often

Edward made drawings on

in later years,

For religious education during the

him

Hoppers

thirteen, the

Hall in Asbury Park, to which they returned in 1897, staying this

at the

would be

12

/

school, in the tradition of Great-

afternoon classes taught the gospels, tem-

perance, and the whole range of moral discipline: values ingrained in

Edward, especially to

frugality

and the willingness

mention emotional reticence and sexual

As

ment

strict Baptists,

the

postpone gratification, not

to

inhibition.^^

Hoppers could be expected

to discipline their children.

Their church,

to use corporal punish-

like generations

cal Protestants, cited biblical rationales for the use

of the

of evangeli-

rod.^"*

No

direct

He

evidence proves that Edward's pranks ever provoked a thrashing.

did,

however, in adulthood develop symptoms of depression like those sometimes traced to overzealous punishment in childhood: pression

is

and

that often de-

"a delayed response to the suppression of childhood anger that

usually results adults

some argue

whom

from being physically

the child loves

life itself."^^

and woodshed

Whether

to

check

and on

hit

and hurt

whom

in the act of discipline

by

he or she depends for nurturance

or not the mild Garret resorted to the razor strop

his son's prankishness,

in adolescence of the introverted nature that

Edward showed

would become

his

signs already

trademark

as

an adult.

The decade of Hopper's American

history.^^

adolescence, the 1890s, was a "watershed" in

Seen with hindsight, the "gay nineties" mark the passage

from the strong moral principles of

rural

and small-town America

into the

beginning of urban and industrial development that eroded traditional ways of life and produced growing alienation. Across the nation, Americans were facing a challenge to their most basic assumptions and beliefs.^' These

changes had

were by

their

little

effect

on Garret and Elizabeth Hopper, insulated

economic security and

as they

religious principles. Indeed, the nineties

saw Garret Hopper not only befriend

the minister but twice serve as a church

trustee.

Neither precept nor example sufficed to transmit a confident

ward. Growing up

ill

the religion-centered

faith to

Ed-

at ease and feeling different, he took his distance from

community by becoming a

approvingly of a couple who, having

skeptic. Late in

life,

he spoke

finally formalized their alliance with a

church ceremony, proceeded to rear their

first

child as a Catholic, the second

as a Protestant, and the third as a Jew.^^ Skepticism had personal and social roots.

By the time he was about twelve

years old,

Edward had suddenly

shot

The Roots of Conflict: i882-i8gg

I

'^

Eddie at the Liberty Street School, Nyac\ (seated on the left in the second

up

to over six feet.

from

row from

the front).

His height and skinny, awkward physique

his contemporaries.

"Grasshopper" they taunted him

discomfort reinforced a mind-set already independent. tary pursuits. a private

He had

and unique

when he promoted

the

Garret's most profound and

father himself and failing to live role,

what with

his

him

scheme of the

develop his

gift,

although his

outdoor

ill-fated cat boat.

The good, Garret never having known a

lasting influence took place indoors.

up

male

to conventional expectations of the

meek demeanor and

his wife,

to

too reclusive, also tried to suggest

prognosis for paternal imprint was not

shadowed by

He took refuge in soli-

with the world confidently on terms more

ability to deal

concerned that the boy was

activity, as

him apart

discovered early his talent for drawing. In art he found

nearly his own. Both parents encouraged father,

set

at school. Social

lack of business

acumen,

all

over-

with her inherited moral authority and wealth, her

hold on the purse strings, and her confident and outgoing character. Yet this very diffidence toward business

made

its

effect

on Edward, who used

to help

out in the store after school, and soon realized where his father's true passion lay:

"An

up,^'^

incipient intellectual

who

never quite

made

it,"

Edward

sized

him

opining that his father should have become a scholar, being that he was

less at

home with

ret set his

most

his

books of accounts than with Montaigne's

telling

example

to his son

through

his reading.

Essays.^^^

The

Gar-

boy read

EDWARD HOPPER

Eddie and his

avidly and always

English

^4

/

classics

remembered

and

a lot

sister,

his father's library as well stocked

of French and Russian in

Marion.

with "the

translation.'"^'

Edward of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who made

Citing Montaigne to exemplify his father's intellectual interests,

evokes a world shaped by the influence

Montaigne represent "the skeptic"

Men

(the other five

one of the

six essays in Representative

examples being Plato, Swedenborg, Shakespeare, Goethe,

and Napoleon). Emerson was read tellectual pretensions

these

in

in

America by men of Garret Hopper's

and Emerson commended Montaigne's

words and they would

Emerson's representative

bleed; they are vascular

men

—

Plato, Shakespeare,

only figures of world literature that

Hopper ever

and

'"'^

and Goethe

Three of

— were

the

related to pictures he

painted. The concept of "the skeptic" provided a philosophical peg own development as he outgrew his religious upbringing. Although in the Puritan

"Cut

prose:

alive.

in-

background, Emerson rejected formal religion

for his

rooted

in favor

of in-

He traced an American rite of passage that Hophis own difficult transition. He had far to go from his

tuitive spiritual experience.

per could recognize in parents'

community of belief to

create a

foundly devoted to the search, through

Emerson's belief

in the

life

that

art, for

was

largely secular yet pro-

inner

truth."*^

For Hopper,

harmony of man and nature was fundamental,

pro-

The Roots of Conflict: 1 882-1 8gg

15

/

viding

a

matrix for his considered view that painting would eventually "at-

tempt

to

grasp again the surprise and accidents of nature, and a more intimate

and sympathetic study of its moods, together with a renewed wonder and huon the part of such

mility

as are

still

capable of these basic reactions.

For the situation of Garret Hopper and fection of Fathers" seems ironically apt: "It

is

his son,

'"^^

Montaigne's essay "Af-

right to leave the administration

of affairs to mothers while the children are not yet of legal age to take over on

own. But the father has brought them up very badly

their

more wisdom and

that at that age they will have

the ordinary weakness of the

common

sex."^^

ability

if

he cannot hope

than his wife, seeing

Affirmations of male superiority were as

writing as they were at variance with the reality of the

in serious

Hopper menage. Also

in

recalled by

vogue

at the

was

he

knew

in Paris:

of two sorts

to us

Sometimes,

—

him; sometimes

it is

process, he thinks of a conflict

came

melancholy and a wanton melancholy.

the problem, the question, the idea, that strikes

simply the

it is

Turgenev,

partial to

"M. Turgenev's pessimism," James argued, "seems

a spontaneous

in a sad story,

Howells soon

for the "reality" of his fic-

which "seem the truth always."^^ James remained

whom

American recep-

called his "dramatic or pictorial method.""*^

became an even more fervent proponent of Tolstoy tions,

two

Dean Howells and Henry James, who adver-

fostered by William

what they

tised

Tolstoy, the

novelists then translated. Turgenev's

most popular Russian tion

time were the "French and Russian in translation,"

Edward, who spoke of reading Turgenev and

picture.'"^^

As James

describes the narrative

between the "picture" and the

to define his art as a constant struggle to

ideas.

master the pictorial

in

Hopper order to

record inner truth.

The work of Turgenev thers

read most widely in America was the novel Fa-

and Sons ^^ Reading about

its

themes of conflict and love between gener-

may have offered a means of unspoken communication between Edward and his father.^" Garret Hopper appears, in the somewhat contemptuous caricatures and sketches produced by his son, as a man afraid of emo-

ations

tional expression.

He

literature he loved.

had

found a surrogate voice by urging on

Edward

his son the

took the lesson to heart. Extremely shy, he also

difficulty voicing his feelings.

Not only did he withdraw by

reading, but,

as an adult, he would often read aloud some literary passage that he admired

instead of direcdy uttering his

intimidating and

less

Among French

own emotions and

ideas.

He

means of communicating. Hopper knew Victor Hugo,

found

this a less

revelatory

novelists.

lustrated, being attracted especially to Les Miserables, with

and vivid descriptions of

Paris.

Other French

classics

whom its

he later

il-

dramatic twists

commonly

translated

EDWARD HOPPER

and read

in

vary (with

/

America

in

Hopper's youth were (justave

F'laubert's

Madame Bo-

unromanticized observation of life and nature and

its

/6

its

defiance

of convention), and Emile Zola's naturalistic novels of the Rougon-Macquart such as Nana. Further readings and sympathies can be inferred from

series,

illustrations

Hopper

eventually produced in art school: there were novels by

Charles Dickens, including Barnaby Rudge, Oliver Twist, Bleaf{ House, and Tale of

Two

Cities,

Brigadier Gerard.

from the cycle of soldier

also sketched

Rudyard Kipling's Private Mulvaney

made

stories that

made such an impression on an adult, he referred

Arthur Conan Doyle's The Exploits of

as well as Sir

Edward

its

author famous. Kipling's work

young Hopper

the

to the poetry.^^

A

that even

when he wrote

Nor can he have missed

as

Kipling's misog-

which could only reinforce prejudices gained elsewhere.

yny,

Hopper's legacy was

If Garret

pursued

art as a child,

literature, his wife's

was

papers. She took pride in a history of artists in her family.

and namesake, Elizabeth Lozier

Griffiths,

drawings survive from the 1830s.

had transplanted the family

and won election

to the

And

who

Her grandmother

had a brother, Jacob Lozier, whose

Francois Le Sueur, a

America two years

to

brother Eustache (1616-1655), jects

Elizabeth had

art.

and some of her drawings survived among the family

civil

engineer,

after the death of his

painted religious and mythological sub-

French Academy.

Both of Elizabeth's children drew from an early age and she saved

work,

much

ative efforts focused

brother.

their

of her son's and some of her less-gifted daughter's. Marion's cre-

As she

on staging puppet shows and

later told

plays, often assisted by her

an interviewer, "the paper

dolls with

played were not paper dolls cut out of magazines with which

which she

little girls

of her

day and succeeding generations have played," but objects that her brother, "often taken for her twin, said,

drew and

colored. "^^

Once after going to a

play, she

Edward

fashioned a model theater; another time, after a family excur-

Coney

Island, he built "a miniature pictorial fireworks display," pat-

sion to

terned after one seen on the

imagination

all

his

Theater would provide

a field for his

life.

Even when he was family "gave

trip.^^

"a tiny lad,"

Edward's

gift

was recognized and the

him every encouragement," Marion remembered.^^ He began

drawing at the age of five and board that became

for

Christmas

his first easel.^^'

at

age seven he received the black-

He made cutout

soldiers

and decorated the

cover of his paint box, which he inscribed prophetically "would-be artist."

When he was about ten, he was given books or magazines of drawing instruction.

For the next year or

so,

Edward

diligently practiced

drawing and

shading geometric shapes, such as spheres and cylinders, and objects, such as vases, bowls,

and boxes. Already these sketches

in charcoal

and white chalk

The Roots of Conflict: 1882-1899

I

n

/.^V

°

vr

Edward Hopper, Three Birds on on paper,

g'A

X 12V4" {2^.1

a '^vdinch^ signed

and dated May

Charcoal

25, iSg^.

cm.).

XJ2.4

focus on the importance of Hght, a concern that remained important to all

his Hfe.

He

also practiced

drawing

him

birds, horses, dogs, hunters, soldiers,

guns, athletes, trains, boats, and bells in church towers. For school, he pro-

duced particularly competent drawings

Hopper

Elizabeth

also

for

geography and zoology

stimulate and shape her children's imaginations. pieces from the Worlds

classes.

procured illustrated books and magazines to

A

deluxe edition, Master-

ofGustave Dore, was one of Edward's treasures.^^

Dore's illustration of The Enchantment of Don Quixote,

Edward

From

in his teens

copied the head of the Don. His later depictions of Quixote on horseback also

have been inspired by

may

this source.

Art supplies were never scarce in the Hopper home, thanks to a running charge account

at

Dutcher Brothers, the Nyack

ceipts for crayons, ink, chalk, paste, pens, as

books and magazines:

Harpers

(for reprints

Blacky

Cat

(fiction).

of British literature). Ladies*

Metropolitan, Munsey's, Quarterly Illustrator, dren), Strand,

stationer. Elizabeth

kept re-

pads of paper, and frames, as well

and Puc/{ (weekly humor and

St.

Cosmopolitan,

Delineator,

Home journal,

McClure's,

Nicholas (illustrated, for chil-

social commentary).''^

The

issue

EDWARD HOPPER

November name "eddie."

of Puc/{ for printed

By

i8

/

the age often,

quantity preserved

13, 1889,

contains doodles of heads in profile and the

Edward was

signing and dating drawings.

The

large

own enthusiasm and his mother's foreThe drawings document a childhood that

testifies to his

sighted appreciation of talent.

Hopper

barely referred to in interviews and for

records.

Some

realistic

rendition of brick shop fronts along

scenes

show remarkable

Brothers (the grocery store that the

which there are few written

sophistication

and anticipate

style.

A

North Broadway, with Callahan Hopper family patronized) and its deliv-

ery wagon, suggests the composition of his 1930 masterpiece, Early Sunday

made

Morning. Hopper

a clear compositional choice of a long horizontal for-

mat, preferring to leave blank the bottom of the page rather than draw a square picture.

A

restaurant interior populated with diners and waiters sug-

gests paintings of his maturity. Besides drawing,

watercolor; one of a sailboat

is

Using small pieces of ordinary paper he painted his

Hopper experimented with

signed and dated 1895, a

when he was

range of subjects similar to

drawings: not only sailboats and ships, but also soldiers,

at play, a

still life.

managing

1899, ^^

^^^ attained some command over the medium,

he painted his father's portrait

this time,

paternal figure looks a

little

to paint landscapes.

cove, his

first

in

At

surviving signed and dated

pond

ice

the floor.

Another

at

Nyack on an

oil,

gouache.

painting also survive. Initially

thirteen, he painted a

The

oil

easel

Hopper

rowboat moored

on canvas. In

a later

sketch of his studio space in his boyhood home, he depicts his

of the old

ballet

scared.

A few amateurish attempts at oil wanted

trees, holly, a lion

an aggressive soldier with a drawn gun and two

to paint

Around

dancers.

By

thirteen.

pen-and-ink

own

painting

with his paint box lying beneath

painted while he was

still

in

in a

it

on

high school, attempted a

favorite subject of the early drawings, a sailing scene.

Hopper also experimented with ink as a medium. As early as 1895, he made a drawing of the British transatlantic steamship, the Great Eastern. He must have been motivated to try pen and ink by reading the illustrated magazines. Joseph Pennell, a popular illustrator, claimed that art in itself," only

due

to the

began

to flourish in

America about

appeared

it

He

This was

development of a new photographic engraving process

the reproduction of pen-and-ink drawings. as

pen drawing, "as an

1880.^^

in

magazines

developed such

facility

Hopper emulated

like St. Nicholas, Puc^, Harper's,

with pen and ink that

this

in part

suitable for

the technique

and the Century.

alone might have sug-

gested to his parents that he pursue a career as a commercial illustrator. the

drawing manuals and the popular

Edward absorbed with

late

illustrations in

the current repertoire of attitudes, styles

Victorian values.

From

magazines and books,

and themes, along

A Christmas gift from his father of toy soldiers in-

The Roots of Conflict: i882-i8gg

p=Og ^"^^

Edward Hopper, on paper, lo

"T^^^^u

THERES TROUBLE COMIN',

X 8" (2^.4

I

Xio.^ cm.).

iS()8.

(C®m\l\s^

Pen and

ink,

/9

EDWARD HOPPER spired

him

/

to cut out his

and he would draw and he conceived

own, painting them

tion;^'"

in careful detail in watercolor,

soldiers, often in action. Historic

a particular fascination for

tween the States had defined the Garret, born in 1852, had

collective

American

memory

open the boy's

to

eyes.^''

history.

The war

his eye

The War

be-

of his father's generafirst

hand, living

riots in

New York, garnering

lived in

documentary photo-

through the terror and danger of the 1863 draft

memories

uniforms caught

the repercussions at

felt

20

graphs and works of art, from Winslow Homer's illustrations and paintings to

commemorative

sculpture, also in public ceremonies

and

festive reenact-

ments. Already by 1890, the event was "becoming a romantic memory."^^ Civil

War monuments and museums and

would

interest

Hopper

An American fire at

the photographs of Mathew Brady

in later years.

revolutionary soldier standing with his bayonet before the

an encampment appears in At Valley Forge, an especially competent

drawing made by Hopper

in 1895,

aged thirteen, in which he took care

to ren-

der accurately the folds in the soldier's coat and the wrinkles on his leggings. In February 1898,

when he was fifteen. Hopper was swept up in the wave

of collective fervor caused by the sinking of the battleship Maine, which went

down

in

Havana harbor with

illustrations,

the loss of 266

he used pen and ink for his

men. Devouring headlines and

own

versions of the events that led

DESTRUCTION OF THE MAINE; FEBHAVANA HARBOR; US.S. Maine; and an image of Uncle Sam captioned THERES [sic] TROUBLE COMIN. Thrillmg to the patriotic to the

Spanish-American War:

RUARY IS,

1898;

rhetoric of President William

Hopper

also portrayed Shelling

Less dramatically,

McKinley and

the brilliant naval displays,

Havana.

Edward absorbed

other contemporary preoccupations

and prejudices. By the 1890s the country was sharply divided over

its

ability

to assimilate the increasing influx

of immigrants, and the debate also

Baptists.^^ Stereotypes flourished,

tending to depict a threat by alien and rad-

ical forces to a status

court, the real

quo represented

America. This

as

split the

Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, and, tout

nativist ideology underlies

Hopper's sketch of a

grotesquely bearded, long-haired man, captioned Anarchism and resembling the popular stereotype of recent immigrants from Eastern Europe.^'"^ lar

A

simi-

ideology informs several other drawings of this period. In one he portrays

eight male figures,

and occupation

endowed with exaggerated

to suggest ethnic types.

junk, Africans dancing around white

men

and stock scenes of African- American

attributes of anatomy, dress,

Others depict

is

Sunday

cast in

school:

Chinese

tied to a stake near a

man

cooking

in a

pot,

life.

Cultural stereotypes also surface in Edward's

which

a

first

surviving doggerel,

language that echoes hymns from church and lessons from

The Roots of Conflict: i882-i8gg

2/

I

Edward Hopper, Anarchism,

7(599.

on paper,

^^^ ^"^

{detail

g'AxyV/'(2^.i

On

A pagan

race

While from

A hoarse cry Of images

the Late Chinese

may downward

on

^''^K

sheet)

X ig.ycm.).

War

trod the path to hell

their multitudinous throats there swell

raised in boistrous praise

of brass and stone

But can the Christian race with

Choke down their The wrath of God

fire

and sword

throats the Gospel of our will surely fall

Lord

on these presumptions puppets

Who bestow their iconsistant efforts on

the heathen horde.

Ibelow are sketches of three heads with Chinese features^

Alluding

to

Chinese resistance

to foreign

domination

in the 1890s,

which

cul-

minated in the Boxer rebellion of 1900, Edward uses religious jargon versified, subversively and awkwardly groping his way through jingoism toward the irony of a

skeptic.^'^'

Irony and satire become a characteristic mode, evident in numerous

drawings.

The new vogue

spired satire: a

woman

Hopper danger comes

of the bicycle quickly caught Hopper's eye and in-

speeds out of control toward the viewer; typically for in

female guise. Satirizing himself, he sketched a cou-

ple courting, with the caption

LANDSCAPE AFTER HOPPER,

alluding to

EDWARD HOPPER

/

Edward Hopper, Eight Male Figures of Different c.

i8gy. Pencil on paper, lo

X 8'' (2^.4

X20.^cm.).

Nationalities

and Occupations,

22

The Roots of Conflict: 1 882- 1 8gg

2^

/

himself ironically with the formula reserved for old masters. Portraying

"A Snapshot," showing an

courtship again, he used the caption

and

early

timely awareness of photography: "snap shot" referred to hand-held photog-

raphy and

man

came

first

into use

around

posing for a photograph

1890.

He made

at the studio

a satirical

drawing of a

of "Prof. Meryon Clark

Hypo

Durkee Esq." Hopper's prankish sense of humor frequently his love for the cartoons

a catcher in a

captioned

is

mask, repeats

"You must laugh." Humorously he combines prejudice in a sketch from 1899: a

and top

And

hat, looks at a

monkey

man

in a

THIS

A COMIC PICTURE

IS

The name

awareness with ethnic

with simian features, dressed in a

The

cage at the zoo.

pends upon Darwin and takes sides

in

Nyack. For

in the conflict

Human

I

don't see any re-

down humorously on

its

punch the joke de-

scientific fervor for

the side of secular

beings with simian features appear also in other

made at the time. Knowledge of Darwin might

who

between religious funda-

mentalism, from Sunday school, and the mounting

Darwin's theories, coming

suit

caption reads: "Pat

Pat invokes the stereotype of the Irish Catholics,

were among the most recent immigrants

edge.

and commands,

this assertion

scientific

they say we're descended from those beasts, faith!

semblance."

The

of the popular British caricaturist Philip May.

scene of a baseball player at bat

and another, of

encouraged by

surf^ices,

knowl-

humorous

sketches he

reinforce negative stereotypes of

Readers of The Descent of Man encounter such statements as

powerful in body and mind than woman, and in a far

mal."^"

"Man

women. is more

savage state he keeps her

in the

more abject state of bondage than does the male of any other aniDarwin also asserted that men have a "greater intellectual vigor and

power of invention" than women.^^ If ideas of male superiority

were

in the air, they

could hardly be taken for

granted in the Hopper menage. Edward's father was not in charge. Frequently he found reason to be at the store or at church, leaving his son alone in a

household

ter, his

in

which he was overwhelmed by females:

grandmother, and the maid.

When

became too threatening, Edward would

bedroom

retreats of his

or the

attic.

his

the presence of

retreat to read or

When

mother, his

all

draw

these

sis-

women

in the solitary

he resorted to his insensitive

pranks, his targets were often female, suggesting equal parts of resentment at

domination and desire

Out of the

to be noticed.

disparity

These were patterns he never outgrew.

between male and female

roles in the

Hopper house-

hold came some remarkable examples of Edward's joking vein. Satirical sketches,

made

at

fending off a stout tance to the

about fourteen, show

woman; then

the thin

first a thin,

man

weak man with

a

beard

submitting with evident reluc-

woman's smothering embrace; and

finally, the

man

in flight,

pur-

EDWARD HOPPER

/

^%^^ .Ji vr— -^

TH

Edward Hopper, Pencil on paper.

H

ESCAPE

ACT ACT II NECK, THE ESCAPE, I,

c.

1896.

M

The Roots of Conflict: i882-i8gg

I

2$

sued by the woman with arms outstretched, over the captions y4CT/, ACT II NECK, THE ESCAPE. The images caricature Hopper's parents and the narrative

conveys his adolescent sense of an imhalanced and threatening

rehi-

tionship between male and female. His mother represents both attraction to

and

fear of the demonstrative

shadows the insecure,

and domineering female, while

retiring

Another cartoon narrative,

Henpeck replies:

A

Misinterpreted

instructing her husband:

"Now

Her husband,

the fire in your hands."

"Oh, no, you'd better leave

it

at

Command,

represents Mrs.

John, I'm going out and

specifically

Hopper's observation

home.

CHRISTMAS POP,

MERRY

with a pen-and-ink drawing of Garret in great surprise

at his gift, a quill pen.

The

paternal figure stands awkwardly, wearing house

shaggy and disheveled on

slippers with his suit, his hair

his balding head,

pathetic.

These caricatures make

clear that

Hopper's male role model lacked the

authority expected by the culture and the

son.

His parents' inversion of psy-

may have caused him to resent willful women. But in the end,

chological roles like his father,

leave

Again the images record

In a similar vein, he produced a card for his father captioned

weak and even

I'll

Henpeck, timidly

identified as Mr.

in the stove."

contemporary stereotypes while suggesting

and experience

his father fore-

male he himself became.

woman like his own introversion.

he was drawn to an outgoing

garrulous personality contrasted with his

mother, whose

§

senior

hopper's

which trumpeted

itselfi

class

produced

a newspaper.

the seniors of 1899 in

The Graduate,

Nyack High School

far ex-

number [seventeen] and in scholarship any graduating class in former years." Nyack was "one of the eight best high schools in the 'Empire State' " and boasted twenty-nine faculty members. In the issue for March

ceeded "in

1899, G.

H. Hopper Dry Goods ran an

committee. In fered.

fact the school's

Hopper had

a

ad.

Edward

served on the advertising

programs were limited. Sports were not

rowing machine and

where he sometimes played with

a

friends.

punching bag

at

home

of-

in the attic

(With one, Ralph Bedell, he also

used to draw.)

Repeatedly in these years Hopper painted and sketched himself. These self-portraits, often in the

much about

form of rather casually executed

his personality, self-image,

sheet together with

caricatures, reveal

and concerns. In one drawing, on

a

two sketches of boxers, he portrays himself with a grim and dressed in boyish knickers, as if he had not grown

expression, bent over up, standing

awkwardly with

body resembles

a pole

large ungainly feet. In another, his thin lanky

supporting

a cylindrical

neck supporting

his head,

with

EDWARD HOPPER large ears protruding in an ungainly

angle. This caricature

his

arm extended

26

at

an

placed in the middle of a sheet crowded with other

is

male images, including

manner and

/

shepherd with

a

man

his staff, a

with a sword, a na-

drawn gun. Only the awkward scrawny figure in the center seems helpless, without a weapon to face the world. Throughout his youth Hopper represented himself with homely, distive

with a spear, a policeman with

a

torted features, indicating his dislike of his thick lips

and large

ears.

He

also

appears as a skinny, ungraceful nude with stooped shoulders, seated on the

edge of

a

tub or pool.

When

he appears riding a bicycle, his figure

is

strug-

work

gling and scrawny. But he repeated this theme, indicating that he could

up speed, and rewarded himself

for the

workout with

symbol of virtuousness that would become

tional

a halo, the

conven-

a staple in his portrayals

of

himself in situations of conflict.

When he graduated from high school m and

ink: clad in cap

1899, he sketched himself in

pen

and gown and holding his diploma, he walks out the door

representing the security of home toward a distant mountain labeled "fame."

A caption reads, OUT INTO THE COLD WORLD. the style of caricature

own complex torial

means

and

to stereotypical

themes

Once again he

emotions. His confidence in his talent induces him to use pic-

to express inner conflict.

of passage, his mind

is

set

The

sketch reveals that in the

on the ambition raised and

justified

ence of art, even while insecurity dictates reference to the ent, discovered

resource.

miliar

resorts to

in seeking to express his

Now

and nurtured it

pointed

and assuring,

yet

in the

home, had already proved

him outward beyond

narrow and

risk.

inhibiting.

the

community

moment

by his experi-

His

artistic tal-

and

a refuge

that

was

His feelings show again

a

so fain an-

other sketch on the same sheet, in a frontal self-portrait with an anxious,

wrinkled brow under the mortarboard of the graduate.

Hopper longed

to be

an

fears for his future security.

artist,

His

but he had to contend with his parents'

father's

own

failure in business did not instill

confidence. His mother, although cultivated and aware of his talent, was anxious

and over-protective. She knew how much

their tenor of life

depended on

her resources and feared the father's fecklessness in the son. Both parents implored

Edward

to

go

to school for illustration.

Mindful of economic

getful of the confident enterprise of Elizabeth's

own

risk, for-

grandfather

in

his

adopted land, they counseled the route made familiar by myriad books and journals. Virtues vailed.

stamped with prudence and predicated on mediocrity pre-

Edward was

inability

and the history of from the

prey to the same considerations, haunted by his father's

and dependence,

start.

failure

in

no position

to be certain

of his powers. Doubt

wrote frustration and depression into the

script

D[FiNIKi;

THE T/lLEi: 1(109-1906

THE FALL OF 1899, Hopper

IN

York School of

American zines.

art,

Illustrating.

began formal training

school has

at the

New

scant trace in the annals of

left

apart from advertisements on crumbling pages of old

maga-

Hopper's receipts for the monthly ten-dollar fee took their place with

the childhood sketches the bills plies

The

and keepsakes treasured

in the attic.

His parents paid

and conditioned the choice. Rearing him, they had provided

and

illustrated

magazines

very cultural opening vision of

where

to stimulate

came back

and shape

his imagination.

That

narrowing

their

to delimit their horizon,

talent like their son's

might

lead.

Clues to what the Hoppers wanted to obtain by sending school for illustration can be gathered from

The hopes dangled and

art sup-

Edward

to a

the surviving advertisements.

the expertise professed belong to the eternal

come-

ons of commercial colleges, even while they document the lively image market in late Victorian America. Just

when Edward was graduating from high

and Pencil tie

for

school, the issue o^ Brush

June 1899 carried an advertisement featuring a youth

in

bow

with pad and pens:

/

27

EDWARD HOPPER

28

/

CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL OF ILLUSTRATING

LEARN TO DRAW BY MAIL Home instruction in drawing for newspapers and magazines by sucAdapted

cessful illustrators. Requires spare time only.

old,

men and women,

tunity to enter a highly profitable profession. struction given elsewhere.

well-known

to

beginners and advanced students.

No

young and

An

oppor-

such practical in-

By our methods students have become

illustrators.

Full information free }

During

the

summer, the school had changed

classes in-house.^ It advertised again in

new name and

with a

drawing

struction in

all

September

in the International Studio

SCHOOL OF ILLUSTRATING

for newspapers, magazines, books. Practical in-

modern methods.

Instructors:

CHAS. HOPE PROVOST (known

as a contribu-

tor to Life, Truth, Scribner's, N.Y. Herald, St. Nicholas, etc.);

LIPMAN

DE

M.

(former Art Editor N.Y. Journal, and contributor to N.Y.

Herald); R. L.

CURRAN (photography contributor to Cosmopolitan,

Truth, Illustrated American, etc.);

W.

to offer

different spiel:

N.Y. teaches

and expanded

location

L. Metcalf,

MISS JANIE

Douglas Volk, and Francis C.

Classes day

and evening.

No

ZIMMER

(pupil of

Jones).

such practical teaching elsewhere.

Call or write for full information.

N.Y. 1

14

SCHOOL OF ILLUSTRATING

West 34th

Street,

New York^

Hopper's receipts bear the school's old name and rolled by the

month

for lessons

The

Hoboken and

to

family took the school at face value.

the world they

address.

He

"Every Day," returning each evening

house on North Broadway, taking the ferry Nyack."*

new

It

sounded

en-

to the

the train to

like a

way

into

knew from print. Nothing in Nyack prepared them to consider

that this faculty

was not

in fact big-time.

1899 issue states that the "School

is

An ad

[the]

in Scribner's

outgrowth of

Magazine October illustrating classes

formed seven years ago by Mr. Chas. Hope Provost."^ Further outgrowth

came

in the

Bool{s,

Magazines,

the

form of books, etc.

(1903)

A

Treatise

on

which accompany

to Illustrate

and Simplified Illustrating

methods Provost used and Hopper met

to those

How

this text

(1911),^'

for Newspapers,

which describes

in school: "Practise sheets similar

book were devised by

me

in 1893,

and

first

Defining the Talent:

used

in

part of

1

8gg-i()o6

29

/

my classes then located at 9 West 14th Street, New York City. ... A my program for each student's work is liberal practise-sheet training."''

Provost advised the would-be illustrator to copy carefully a

number of charts, many mag-

and himself boasted he had "drawn thousands of illustrations" for azines, including Harper's Monthly,

Harper's Weef{ly,

Vogue, Ainslee's,

and

Ladies World.

The

1903 book addressed the "Commercial Side of Illustration," returning

theme of its author: "Commercial

to a favorite

treated as a business."'^ Profit

was

art

is

when worth repeating. "A

extremely profitable

a proven selling point,

highly profitable profession" was what Provost advertised in June of 1899. Yet the profit motive does not grip everyone, as even Provost

many

students of an extremely artistic temperament

forced to admit:

is

all

"To

commercial work

is

They should try the publishers." That would not satisfy the likes of Edward Hopper. Whatever practice sheets and charts might give him technically, the school's most valuable lesson was a more precise understanding of the nature and implication of his gift. Illustration school taught him that commercial work was as alien to his natural bent as business was to his father's. With distasteful.

growing self-knowledge came resentment remove. In the 1930s

and

and surfaced

at a great

from home

Saint-Gaudens, director of the Department of Fine Arts at the

Carnegie

Institute.

According to Saint-Gaudens: "So continuously did he draw,

that after graduation

The

later

from high school

memory

what engaged Hopper the most

paragon of

his parents sent

him

to a

commercial

art

New York City. That gave scant satisfaction."'"

establishment in

when

that lingered

the story of his departure

disappointment with rare openness to a supporter of his work,

initial

Homer

Hopper confided

of discontent must be weighed against the signs of at the time. It

famous

illustrators

was the "Golden Age" of

illustration,

commanded impressive fees. The fancy: he made a pen-and-ink sketch of

practitioners

caught

his

Dana Gibson, palette in hand, elegantly attired.' Themes suitable for publishers predominate in his earliest work. He had copied an illustration by Dore for Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Charles

Mariner";

now

he sketched other literary characters in pen and ink: from

Dickens, the simple-minded youth in Barnaby Rudge, Fagin and Oliver in Oliver Twist,

Carton

in

A

Tulkinghorn the inscrutable lawyer Tale of Two Cities;

Brigadier Gerard; from Hawthorne's The

Prynne.

He penciled an

Sighs," about a vorites Kipling

illustration for

young woman's and

Hugo as

in Blea/{

House, and Sydney

from Conan Doyle, the hero o^The

Exploits of

Scarlet Letter, the adulterous Hester

Thomas Hood's poem "The Bridge of

suicide.

He

also sketched

well as from Ibsen

from

his old fa-

and Cervantes.

Less likely to represent assignments, other sketches

show

with the caption "Studies for Devil in 'Miser,'" although Satan

devils' is

heads

not a char-

EDWARD HOPPER acter in the Moliere

drama. Hopper expands on the devil theme with

boldly colored panel in reflectively all in

so

/

red, with a cape

sword barely

signed and dated 1900: a meditative figure, chin

oil,

on one hand,

is

a small,

dressed in accordance with old

of stiff silk

and

visible in the other

German

tradition,

a cock's feather in his cap, a long pointed

hand. Surrounded by a hint of flames,

Mephistopheles image suggests nothing so

much

as a

drawing

this

for the theater,

perhaps for Goethe's Faust, which came to be seen as emblematic of German

Romantic consciousness. Hopper "representative

men")

as a writer

later refers to

whose

Even while honing techniques ordinary settings at home. a rocking chair, the house

and buildings

rocks,

Hopper continued to sketch graphite or ink, he drew a woman in

in the city,

Working

in

on North Broadway, Smith's dock,

saw

stone, a cat boat that he

Goethe (one of Emerson's

ideas shaped his aesthetics.

a colonial

in the landscape,

and sketches of his family and

that

was gaining currency with some

illustrators

friends.

him

In the spring of 1900 he also experimented with ink wash, for

medium, one

tomb-

neighboring Piermont, more studies of boats,

in

a

new

and might be

expected in an up-to-date school. Ink wash, like painting, could be repro-

duced by the new process of printing from

some an had no

Fleet.

drawing, he used wash

to depict a

and seemed

to

Although Hopper

easier alternative to the exacting discipline of line.

fear of line

satchel, a figure

White

a half-tone screen

music box,

a revolver, a

of a boy, and a United States naval vessel, the Ship of the Great

The

latter

he rendered in loving

detail, characteristic

of the boy

who grew up around boats and remembered the Maine in youthful drawings. He continued to take pride in the new fleet, which was modernized under the expansionist presidency of McKinley and painted white in a boast of power to the world.

With the views

penchant for caricature. Hopper should have heard willingly

his

on "humor

Broadly speaking, tle

of the school's head, Provost,

in art"

all

humorous

lengthening of line, a

little

perceptible twist to a curve

But

called a caricature.

must be guided by the

hand

it is.

that

The

draws

A

lit-

and similar devices make what

these intentional deviations

a caricature

must

first

artists

learn to

is

from nature

humor; and

draw an

object as

of ability will help to give an

approved methods of caricaturing.'"

brilliant

the Christmas

exaggeration of nature.

a brain that has a true conception of

or without such advice.

to copy.

is

later wrote:

shortening of that one, an almost im-

these

Copying the works of comic

insight into

With

—

—

art

who

Hopper found an

English illustrator Phil

able comic artist

May drew

number of the Century magazine

East

for 1899.'^

and began

End Loafers

Soon

after,

for

one of

Defining the Talent:

1

8gg- 1 go6

May's three down-and-out male figures before

who also made two

i

/

a

shop front was copied by

Hopper,

acquired Phil May's

wise he

pen-and-ink sketches entitled Phil May's

S/{etc'hl?oo/{

with

hke-

fifty cartoons;'"^

Singer, depicting

a scruffy street musician.

When Hopper

returned

home

for the

summer he selected and

The Cree^at Hogencamps, Old Church on

sheet" training:

delineated

of "liberal practise-

local sights in precise sketches that suggest the effect

New City Road,

De-

He

also

ventured a naturalistic watercolor of the most famous and grandiose

local

House on Mountain, and Camp

serted

Nyacl{,

Greenwood

Lal^e.

landmark, Hool{ Mountain, Nyacl{. Looming above the Tappan Zee, the

promontory had inspired an ambitious 1866.

Other grand

vistas

oil

by Sanford Robinson Gifford

during the second half of the century by Albert Bierstadt,

worked

from Nyack

just across the river

reproduced

in the illustrated press, the

the visual culture that permeated the

been

in

Edward's mind

in

nearby were painted with similarly romantic vision

as

in

who

lived

and

Irvington-on-Hudson. Widely

Hudson

River painters formed part of

Hopper home. Their

vision

must have

he viewed their scenes. Gifford's calm view of the

double peak above the water emphasized light and atmosphere, looking south from Haverstraw Bay.

Hopper looked north from Nyack, centering his

composition not on the double peaks but on a bare rock

face: against the light

rock a dark smokestack stands out, above a mill with dark windows. Below,

and hints of works and docks invade the green slopes and encroach

trestles

on the

river. Typically,

he undercuts the romantic.

to draw at Greenwood Lake, Hopper invited comparison with Hudson River painter. Jasper Cropsey, whose home overlooked the Tappan Zee, had painted the lake in the 1860s. When Hopper camped there with friends, he recorded the experience in drawings: two show the tent and

Choosing

another

campsite in meticulous littering the

end of the

third sketch (at the site,

but the

detail,

with a bicycle wheel suspended

letter

way home. Beneath

picts his father sitting

spying on his son.

Greenwood Lake,

ON THE WATCH,

on the roof of the house squinting through

The

Hopper dea telescope,

boys stayed out for a week or more: his mother pre-

N.Y., July 24, 1900."

"Edward Hopper, Camp Nyack,

Two

days later he wrote his earliest

letter:

Dear Mama, In the

first

place

it's

raining "to beat the band," which prevents

us from going outside very much and that said

I

should not.

1

A

he wrote home) shows not only the camp-

the caption

served a fungus on which he inscribed:

surviving

in the tent, cans

foreground, milk crate benches, and laundry hung out to dry.

am

feeling well

is

why

and having

a

I

am

writing for

I

good time and have

EDWARD HOPPER

^*^B(%i»iyf

,'^^^

/

"^"f^S^-^

J-^H^>-.,.-;„

..

,^

Edward Hopper, Camp Nyack, Greenwood Lake,

(3^aij CTJ^Qa.GnEENVVOOD LAKE

igoo.

i^

^

Pen and ml{ on paper,

g'AXi^V/(24.i X^4.gcm.).

worn my underclothes washday for us.

plenty of clothes and underwear, having the lake yesterday

On

which was

a regular

Tuesday, while some of us were out in the woods,

beautiful fungus as white as

I

in

found a

snow and have scratched my name on

it.

We have been fishing but have had poor luck. We have only had one mess offish since we came and they were rather small. '^

At eighteen. Hopper ports.

He had

still felt

resisted.

under surveillance. His mother had wanted

Rain persuades where she could

re-

not: characteristic but

He knows the topics mothers want, health and hygiene, unTo judge from the sketch, the garment washed in the swim was

hardly gracious.

derwear. striped.

Among Wallace

who camped that summer at Greenwood Lake was Tremper, who in his own way was to deal with the transformations the friends

of the early twentieth century more deftly than Hopper, going from black-

smith to plumber and

finally to gas station operator in

Nyack.

'^'

Hopper

por-

trayed Wallace and himself boxing in a format inspired very directly by Phil

May,

who had lampooned himself boxing in his Record of the Famous Fight May and Fatty Coleman, setting his own scrawny, awkward fig-

between Phil

ure against Coleman's rotund brawn.''

Hopper made

a like sketch

of himself

taking a beating from the more muscular Tremper. Hopper's body

is

long

Defiriing the Talent: i8gg-ig()6

and skinny,

his posture

/

awkward and graceless,

his face

^j

deHcate but distorted

with a fearful grimace. Tremper's belly bulges out over his boxer shorts, while

Hopper's striped shorts are ornamented with feminate qualities.

arm

A

variant shows the virile

scoring a knockout as

Hopper

falls to

a

Howerlike

bow

Tremper with

the Hoor.

expresses a deep truth about Hopper's emotional

life

Again

a

suggesting ef-

his strong right

comic narrative

and, here, his insecurity

about himself

The

year in the city had sharpened Edward's awareness of his natural

bent and of the art scene. In the

him

transfer to a

a full

fall

of 1900 he persuaded his parents to

much more famous and

range of instruction not only in commercial but also

agreed to pay fifteen dollars for his part,

would be would be

a

let

distinguished school, which offered

month, half again

as

much

in fine art.

as before.

They

Edward,

to study illustration. But now the next step The examples with which he was beginning to identify hand. The New York School of Art was on the second floor

would continue

shorter.

close at

of a ramshackle brick building at 57 West Fifty-seventh Street, at the northeast corner of Sixth

Avenue. Founded

William Merritt Chase,

in 1900

it

as the

Chase School by the painter

was owned and run by Douglas John Con-

Edward Hopper, Edward Hopper Boxing with Wallace Tremper, Pen and

inl{

on paper.

igoo.

EDWARD HOPPER

/

who worked

nah, a painter

sion required no

would be

tests,

in a style strongly influenced

an exceptional

laxity.

eligible for the painting class.

Anyone

34

by Chase. Admis-

drawing

familiar with

Beginning students worked immedi-

ately

from

color

were taught together. The whole thrust was antiacademic. By compar-

ison with

rather than

life

more

the instructors

on the

classic

works

staid academies, the place

were not on

races while seated selves

from

lintels.'"

was

in plaster casts.

boisterous, even chaotic.

in the studio, the students

chairs,

Drawing and

When

boxed with the models; ran

hopping about the room; and chinned them-

New students could enroll at any time of year as long as

space was available in the dilapidated studios. Unsuspecting entrants were

greeted by whistling, singing, smoking, and teasing classmates.

A former stu-

dent recalled:

One

of the peculiarities of the Chase School

have of wiping palate scrapings

and sometimes on the to the highest a It is in

man

chairs.

at the

is

a

Bohemian way they

end of the day on the

walls,

The paint is two inches thick from floor

can reach, most of it dry, but you can never

great close velvety gobs, laid on by the knife

full

tell.

and indeed

a

curious sight to a stranger and every Chase student has an accidental

patch of red paint on the brow of his pants.

Vivacity and pranks

went hand

in

hand with

''^

serious work.

The

school held

regular public concours and student exhibitions. Every year there were ten free tuition scholarships, five each for

best studies in the several classes

A more du

were

men and women. Cash also

handed out monthly.

remarkable number of Hopper's classmates went on

or less vivid in the story of twentieth-century

Bois,

Homer chorn,

prizes for the

make names American art: Guy Pene to

George Bellows, Rockwell Kent, Glenn O. Coleman, Gifford

Boss,

Beal,

Arnold Friedman, Walter Pach, C. K. Chatterton, Carl Sprin-

Edmund

William Graecen, Randall Davey, Walter

Henry Bruce, Clarence Coles younger student,

Webb

P.

Phillips,

Tittle, Patrick

and Eugene Speicher.

A much

Hollenbeck, then called Robin, or sometimes

"Robin Red Nose," became the actor Clifton Webb.'" Another, Vachel Lindsay,

took the advice of the popular teacher Robert Henri and gave up paint-

ing for poetry, although he continued to illustrate his Illustration

was taught by Arthur Ignatius

sketches emphasized character, unlike Hopper's Keller,

New

renowned

York

Akademie.

at the

He

own

Keller,

poems.''

whose

work

before this time.

for the brilliant facility of his technique,

National

Academy of Design and

in

realistic figure

had trained

Munich

in

at the Alte

created an impression of spontaneity through the judicious

use of passages of light and tonal subtlety. Also, Keller had published an

il-

Defining the

Talefit:

i8gg- 1 go6

lustration in the issue oi Century

magazine from which Hopper copied

work of this period makes

May."" Hopper's

^5

/

Phil

clear that Keller's students fo-

it

cused on the figure, sketching costumed models as an aid to their imagination

and

improve

to

seriously,

He

their

drawing. Hopper had already hegun

concentrating on

also investigated the

just

one part of the body, such as a hand or

"tall,

from along the Hudson,

also

ton recalled that ting next to

him

Hopper looked up

make

confidence and awareness to intensity of his

Chatterton,

him

who was

per's timidity

him

a classmate in

and good

a "tall

Newburgh,

looking"^"*

an older brother, always

like

il-

New York. Chatter-

Hopper developed

further

the

sit-

still

training as an illustrator.

into the class

and brushes: and

"It's

reserve,

it

self-

the leap from illustration to painting.

newly acquired resolve emerges from an anecdote

Hopper came

a palette

to

at

was

as Chat,

in class.

Another year passed before

1 90 1,

known

two years older than Edward and

young man,

a.foot.

fellow student recorded his

big-boned and solemn, but with nice flashes of

dry humor.""^ Clarence K. Chatterton, lustration,

A

drawings of Vesalius.

impression of Hopper as

anatomy

to study

One day

The

told by

of

late in the fall

where Chatterton was drawing and handed

time you started to paint. ""^ For one of Hop-

was an enormous

self-revelation

and commit-

He could do no less than share his own new sense of higher purpose man who had come to fill the place in his affections of the brother he

ment.

with the

never had. Hopper's determination so impressed Chatterton that he accepted the challenge.

He became

a painter

and

a lifelong friend.

In that period at the school, fine arts students chose ers, all

from

a

range of teach-

of whom deferred to Chase as the founder and leading teacher. Other

faculty

members included

whom,

like

}.

Carroll Beckwith and

F.

Luis Mora, both of

Chase, taught drawing and painting, and Frank Vincent du

Mond, who taught painting and composition. Beckwith's name

is

inscribed

on one of Hopper's early drawings of a female nude, perhaps because he sisted

Chase and may have taught one of Hopper's

as-

classes in Chase's absence.

Hopper's favorite teacher was Kenneth Hayes Miller, with

whom

he studied

drawing.

Chase was Hopper's at the

Royal

Academy

in

first

teacher in painting. Born in Indiana, but trained

Munich, Chase commanded admiration

as "the lead-

ing spirit and chief instructor" at the school, to which he brought his Euro-

pean

urbanity."^' In

three

hundred students, about

sisted that

February 190 1, Chase, then fifty-two, claimed sixty percent

of

whom

were women.

have

He

in-

he warned his students: "Shake off the influence of the school as

quickly as you can. (cultivate individuality. Strive to express your

ronment according

"Many

to

to

your

own

your

lights, in

students stay too long in art school

.

.

.

own

way."^^

The average

He

own

envi-

explained:

period of study

is

EDWARD HOPPER

about three years. as a life career,

and

.

.

.

Not more than one-tenth of the

this,

art school only to gain

perhaps,

is

just as well."'"

six years,

recalled.^'^

work

model

in front

and once

Hopper, heartened

dressed

—white carnation

in his

run through a ring, spats," Chatter-

Every Monday, Chase gave

in a large studio,

facility.

twice what Chase prescribed.

The great man "was always impeccably lapel buttonhole, pearl-grey vest, his tie

dents'

art students follow art

He felt that a student needed

technique and mechanical

by prizes and scholarships, stayed

ton

i6

/

a

a public evaluation

month, he painted

of all the stu-

a study

from the

of his students as a "practical demonstration of his method."^"

Chatterton called Chase's criticisms "theatrical triumphs" and noted:

"He

punctuated his remarks by running his fingers through his large moustache while he gazed intently

through ribbon.

glasses, or a

at the

student whose

work he was considering

monocle which hung around

neck on

his

a

wide black

He was a great showman, and he had a great following. The women,

particularly,

hung on

his every word."^'

Chase accompanied

his students

on

Museum of Art, where he hoped that Lindsay told how Chase implored students

occasional visits to the Metropolitan

they would be inspired. Vachel to

go

to the galleries at least

once a month. ^^ They also went to exhibitions

held nearby at the Lenox Library, which in the

fall

of 1903 was showing

Japanese prints and Whistler etchings. ^^ These excursions are documented

men

by Hopper's sketches of three

in a

museum

gallery carefully studying

the paintings.

Most of the figures he sketched

Sculpture, too, caught Hopper's attention.

were eye

permanent

in the cast gallery, then a

fell

on the Heracles from the

hys'ippos's

east

installation at the Metropolitan.

His

pediment of the Parthenon, the LMocoon,

Apoxyomenos, Boethus's 5o)/ Strangling a Goose, the Venus de Milo,

and

the Apollo Belvedere, Michelangelo's David

his Moses,

and Rodin's La

necker's Ariadne, Thorvaldsen's Venus,

Vieille

Johann Dan-

Femme. He

also

sketched from reproductions in art books that he bought, particularly Masters

ofArt, the inexpensive magazinelike

then popular.

series

Hopper even copied

part of the letterhead of this series on one of his drawings.

Chase defended the need

to assimilate the

solute originality in art can only be

dark room from babyhood. frankly and openly take in

judgment couraged art,

will

all

.

.

found

we

we

can.

that

his students to

like in

at a

them.

master whose work most pleases you,

and

try to

do

it

has been locked in a

are dependent on others, .

.

.

The man who does will

have value. "^"^

let

us

that with

And

he en-

synthesize and adapt motifs from famous works of

few pictures

what you most

made by others: "Ab-

man who

in a

Since

produce an original picture that

advising: "Study a

find out

.

advances

yourself."^^

time and try to understand them and I

in

should not mind you imitating the order to find out what you like in

it

Defining the Talent: i8gg-igo6 In line with Chase's teaching, after other artists,

reveahng

minded

He

curiosity.

tempting

to

Hopper produced

wide range of

a

i7

I

interests

a

number of

and

sketches

open-

a student's

sketched details more often than the entire work,

at-

understand better whatever features interested him most. His

sources were old masters, such as Hals, Rubens, and Velazquez; he also found the nineteenth-century artists appealing. His taste included both academics

Edwin Landseer, Henri Alexandre Georges Regnault, Mariano Fortuny y Carbo, and Frederick Lord Leighton, and more vanguard artists such as Edouard Manet. Hopper even used oil to copy Manet's Woman with a such as Sir

Parrot, instead

The

Fifer

of the usual pen or pencil sketches, which he

He

and Olympia.

much reproduced

Hoe, which was

With

at the time.

Hopper combined elements of Ingres's Comtesse Bar at the Foltes-Bergeres into acter

from

a

popular

Chase painted

sweeping brush strokes with ity.

He

taught separate

too,

a

with a

his characteristic wit,

McFlimsey,

a single sketch of Miss Flora

period.

a char-

That Chase

influ-

evident in Hopper's earliest student

is

an elegant

in

Man

d'Haussonville with Manet's

poem of the pre—Civil War

enced Hopper by example, paintings.

made of Manet's

also sketched Jean-Francois Millet's

realist style,

characterized by broad

loaded paintbrush, achieving surface virtuos-

life classes

men and women, where

for

students

drew

and painted from nude models, although male models wore loincloths when posing for

women. Chase

held portrait and

worked from costume models or a fish so rapidly that

ner

when he was

it

set-ups.

could go back,

still

still-life classes

where students

He liked to show that he could limn fresh, to the

done. Students labored over

less

market around the cor-

perishable objects such as

copper pots and ceramic jugs, contrasting the textures and degrees of surface reflection. In 1903,

minded students

Hopper painted

that "it

is

a series of

An

for Chase,

who

re-

not the subject, but what the painter makes of his

subject that constitutes great painting. untitled oil portrait of a

Chase's daughter Dorothy,

still lifes

"^^'

young

girl

from

this

period must represent

whom her father portrayed in a similar pose about

1902. Either she posed in class, or

Hopper copied Chase's work. Hopper

also

painted a fellow student before her easel in what must be an observation from Chase's class in portrait and

young blonde

women

is

still life.

this

in interiors.

Hopper produced many draw1901, he frequently drew clothed and costumed models: American a chef, and figures wearing various historical garb. He drew the

While studying with Chase and ings. In

Indians,

nude models

Jimmy

Observed unaware from behind,

painted with elegance worthy of one of Chase's depictions of

in life classes

Miller,

over and over again.

One

favorite

male model,

Corsi, boasted of his heroic poses for John Singer Sargent at the

Boston Public Library.^^ Hopper drew him both nude and costumed as a

fish-

EDWARD HOPPER

erman per's

i«

/

or a historical figure, also portraying

work on anatomical

and

details

him

figures in

somber

in rather

movement

oils.

Hop-

reflects his consci-

entious attention to specific classroom exercises.

was

It

Hopper made seeing monotype

in 1902 at the school that

—

his first prints

—

his only

probably after portraits by Chase, who may have had his students try the medium in class. Chase felt strongly about the communion of the brain and the hand and stressed the spontaneity nec-

monotypes ever

essary for this technique.

Monotype,

or wiped in a slow-drying

oil

and printed before

is

erate

it

dries,

way of working. His

in

which the image

is

painted, rubbed,

paint or ink directly on a metal or glass plate

not really compatible with Hopper's very delib-

five

surviving monotypes,

portraits

all

on small

scraps of paper or discarded envelopes, appear to have been experiments

quickly forgotten. Fashion in the art world shifted and Chase's

work came

to

be viewed as regressive by the time Hopper matured. Hence he often omitted mentioning that he

had ever studied with Chase. In

lanky, diffident, laconic,

swaggering master, whose

"Men

didn't get

Hopper's life in

shift to

said to be as dazzling as his

Chase. There were mostly

painting had

marked

New

make fun of someone more

year younger than Hopper,

a decisive break with his past,

and

Only two

as well.

York School, he found himself in

a posi-

provincial than himself. Walter Tittle, a

came from

farther

away and from an even more

controlling background. Tittle's father in Springfield, Ohio,

quire what never crossed the

demeanor:

women in the class. "^^

encouraged other developments

years after his transfer to the tion to

was

talk

much from

that free society

a rare reference, the

and misogynistic pupil dryly undercut the short

mind of

the

presumed

meek Garret Hopper.

to re-

Tittle

was

constrained to apply to Douglas Connah, as head of the school, for a special dispensation to take the sketches of

life class

nude women,

only

when

like those that

a

went

boyish sketches and the receipts stored up in this

his first entry in a diary: for

on October

at school today,

There was

a

When

a

No

among

the

Nyack, were wanted back

28, 1902,

in

Walter recorded:

got up a verse about

young fellow named

Who worked

posing.^'^

contretemps gained him what was perhaps

Ohio. Edward's reaction to

Hopper,

male model was

to take their place

me

this afternoon.

Tittle

in the life-class a little

female they hired,

he quickly retired Back, back to the woods, Mr.

In his younger schoolmate

Titde."*^

Hopper recognized and

ridiculed values that he

himself was in the process of rejecting, not without the inevitable

conflict.

Defining the Talent:

Among all

Adjusting to ting

right with

it

provided his

first

Baptist circles in

about

among

prompted

Limericks are to poetry as caricature

resorts to a reductive life classes

^9

I

the riotous students, Hopper's intensity

Tittle recorded.

Hopper

Sgg- 1 ()ob

I

form when touched

may have been

is

words

the

that

Here again

to art.

deep nerve.

in a

unsettling for Hopper. Just get-

male anatomy was challenging enough, but female models view of a

woman

without clothes. Flesh was not exposed

Nyack. Something of what the young men

may

themselves

in

and talked

felt

Guy Pene du Bois, Hopper's who described his own shock at

be gathered from

schoolmate, confidant, and lifelong friend,

sketching a female nude: "His face was hot, and he knew, with a feeling

first

of desperation, that

was redder than

it

it

had ever been before

could have stood this better, he thought, with fewer

without any others he could not have stayed a flurry,

du

Bois blurted to his mother: "I

men

On

at all."

know how you

in his life.

in the

He

room, but

home in when you are

returning look

undressed."^'

In the

fall

of 1902, as Hopper started his third year

new

about to encounter a

who would

teacher

give

new

at the school,

definition to his ideas

about art and, incidentally, prolong his stay in school. In

Mond moved He was replaced

Vincent du League.

by Robert Henri, then thirty-seven,

worked

in

Europe.

lar

Tall,

Academy of the Fine

Warm

them

personally, he advised

own

to study the life

ideas. Stressing that art

gods as

displaced art by

life,

discarded

wrote du

cart:

underscored Henri's challenge to the reigning philosophy and

master with metaphors of revolution."*" Henri's tion life's

among the young. Chase sake. The difference was

ered his is

first

criticism in class

.

.

.

preached

as

heard

an instructor. all

over the

From

He

class

on November

talks in a forceful

was "the

seat of the sedi-

art for art's sake;

monumental.'"*^

simply burning with art enthusiasm and

had

philosophy of

easily as brittle porcelain,"

"Completely overturned the apple

who

a

the craft of painting or drawing.

technic, broke the prevailing Bois,

under

broad-shouldered, casually dressed, Henri taught

to express forthrightly their

more than

Arts,

Eakins, and had also studied and

should communicate character and emotions, he emphasized aesthetics

who had

and composition, and made himself exceedingly popu-

with his students.

around them and

Thomas

a disciple of

life classes, portraits,

November Frank

across Fifty-seventh Street to the Art Students

trained in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania

Thomas Anshutz,

he was

7,

is

When

the

Henri, art for

newcomer

deliv-

Walter Tittle exclaimed: "He

the most original

man

I've yet

and animated manner, and can be

room."'*''

the start, Henri taught his "Special Composition Class," devoted

"to a critical study of the principles of pictorial

with a view

and decorative composition,

to their practical application in painting, illustrating,

and de-

EDWARD HOPPER signing."

The

trait class, all

course also covered "the theory and history of art."

In his por-

Henri, according to Vachel Lindsay, "paints the face of a portrait

through

in half

an hour

—but does

it

over and over ten or thirty times

he has mastered every passing expression of the

moment

the last

40

/

sitter's

countenance

till

— then

at

he dashes in the expression that he thinks the profoundest

expression of the

sitter's personality."^''

Henri demanded

"force, likeness,

and

the portraits the students produced.'*'

life" in

Henri shared much with Chase.

In spite of the perceived revolution,

Both admired Manet. Henri encouraged

Woman

students to study Manet's

his

with a Parrot and Boy with a Sword at the Metropolitan

Museum,

where he, like Chase, often took groups of students. He also stressed that Manet had admired Velazquez, Goya, and Hals. Hopper recalled: "At the Chase school we had painted like Manet. Henri was a great admirer of Manet and Manet had been influenced by the Spaniards, Henri resembled Chase,

too, in using

flat,

somber

low

tones, dark.'"^^

colors with painterly

brushstrokes reminiscent of Manet's work, which he praised: "Manet's stroke

was ample, Chase

full,

and flowed with

a gracious continuity,

His 'Olympia' has a supreme elegance.

clever.

in

"^'''

encouraging spontaneity of paint application.

as the class monitor, recalled that

Henri "forbade

brushes."^" This prohibition ultimately helped

was never

Henri

Du

Bois,

who

his students the use

Hopper

to

flip

or

also agreed with

develop a

served

of small style

of

painting in which he grouped large masses of forms, emphasizing figure-

ground

relationships.

Henri's presence soon affected the direction of Hopper's student work. Al-

though Hopper did not make radical changes returned to the

still lifes

models and friends such easels.

He

Chase

as

du

stressed.

He

in subject matter,

continued to

he never again

make

portraits of

Bois, often depicting his fellow students at their

also continued to paint oils that portray

nude models shown seated

or standing on the classroom platform. Henri instructed his students that the

purpose of studying from the model was "mainly to get experience," explain-

and in making your when working from the model. "^' Even after Henri's arrival. Hopper continued to paint with the somber palette he had developed under Chase, including when he chose subjects outing,

"Your composition

is

the expression of your interests

composition you apply what you learn

side of the classroom, such as his

rows

its

Hopper in a

composition, but not

men

in

an orchestra

palette,

lit

pit

(which clearly bor-

from the work of Edgar Degas).

also painted several pictures of his

dimly

boats.

its

bedroom

in

Nyack,

a lone figure

theater interior, as well as colorless views of a ferry slip

Henri had taught

his students to

modeling," explaining that

it

and

sail-

experiment with "black and white

"was largely practiced by the old masters who

relieved themselves of a double difficulty by building

up

their pictures in

Defining the Talent:

monochrome and

1

8gg- 1 go6

wholly dependent on the

monochrome

dent pranks as long as he was not present. In his men's evolved that upon the arrival of a student

new

goaded into treating the entire

and cheese

an elaborate characle variously

comiums on

in

class to a beer

life class,

to the school,

party.

which one older student pretended

commenting on

the students'

work only to lavish elaborate enThe pretender would then

At this juncture,

to strike \}[\^faux

who

it.

Opening

that of Chase.

He would

large, dirty studio walls

with their

smeared and spattered

from

bold

X over work he disapproved,

on pictures

and

paint, student sketches,

Henri pointed out both good and bad

a discussion,

ing individual expression over technical proficiency. a

role

Henri, seconded by the others, with the exception of Rock-

group of drawings against the

layers of

into a frac-

fly

was Hopper's

it

took the teacher's part.

In class, Henri's style of criticism differed a

also

Henri him-

the neophyte's tentative drawing. ^^

who was Hopper, and

up

custom

There was

tious rage, even attempting to destroy

well Kent,

a

he would be

to be

look at the drawing of the best student,

line

Henri's

Life in

substructure."^"

however, was anything but somber. Henri did not seem to mind stu-

classes,

self,

Form was almost

applying glazes of transparent color.

later

4

I

as a sign of approval;

it

Where Chase

was Henri's custom

many of Hopper's

caricatures.

features, prais-

scrawled

to paint a red dot

student paintings earned

the mark.

Hopper's long hours of reading and intellectual curiosity made him,

more than many of his its

revolutionary difference from Chase and academic

rationally

on

a

and

fellows, a ready audience for Henri's philosophy art.

Henri spoke inspi-

wide range of topics, including contemporary

theater.

He

fre-

quendy quoted from French authors such as Zola, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Guy de Maupassant, not that he wanted pean aesthetic on their

work.^"^

his students to

impose

Like Walt Whitman and Emerson,

a

Euro-

he found

value in American subject matter; he wanted his students to develop personal, native

Among his diverse enthusiasms were Whitman, whom he praised as a model for the artist:

means of

Emerson, Tolstoy, and

expression.

"Walt Whitman was such His work

is

thought, his

as

I

an autobiography life

have proposed the

real art

student should be.

—not of haps and mishaps, but of

his deepest

indeed.""

The excitement Henri evoked

in the writings

of others could hardly be

expected of Hopper: too far from character. His recollections provide

esti-

mates that are balanced and nuanced: "Henri wasn't a very good painter, don't think

least

I

Irish

woman

in the

so.

He was

with red

a better teacher than painter.

hair. Beautiful

and tough. "^^ Hopper picked up

way of style from Henri, but he began

of painting under his teacher's influence.

He

to

develop his

at

His wife was an

own

little

philosophy

defined Henri's central princi-

EDWARD HOPPER

Edward Hopper in Robert c.

igo^-igo^ (seated

pie as:

"Art

is life,

terpretation of life.

Henri's Life

Drawing

Class at the

New

Yor^ School of Art,

in foreground at right).

an expression of life, an expression of the "^^

"Henri was

a

good

and an

artist

technical side

painting,

which

was

a

little

weak.

He was sold

Walter Tittle noted that Henri predicted

was

to the

who

a renaissance:

much

Hopper echoed when he as his

own

"A

school of

asserted that an artist ex-

personality in art.

Hopper

Henri's "courage and energy," which he believed did

course of art in this country."

much

He asserted: "No single figure

later

to

wrote of

"shape the

in recent

Ameri-

can art has been so instrumental in setting free the hidden forces that can the art of this country a living expression of its character and

command

that his students interpret

life

its

make

people."^*"

around them coincided

with the goals of the Muckrakers, the group of contemporary writers

sought to arouse public opinion by exposing greed, corruption, and evils

in

and not the same old

will paint their personalities,

this that

presses nothing so

Henri's

life.

economy of means

led to a certain meretriciousness of brush work."^^

artists will arise

thing."^^ It

in-

He taught broadly. He dealt

teacher.

not just with the meticulous things of painting but related painting to

The

42

/

such as slums and prostitution. Their sensational

stories,

who

social

featured in

Defining the Talent:

1

8gg- 1 go6

4^

/

popular magazines like Cosmopolitan and McClure's, ultimately had an effect

on both

and

art

literature.

that any subject

was

Their

efforts served to reinforce Henri's suggestion

possible for a painting.

Henri's real-world concerns were balanced by Hopper's other important teacher,

begun

Kenneth Hayes

his study at the

Only

Miller,

six years

older than Hopper, Miller had

Art Students League under the conservative teacher

Kenyon Cox, but he and several other male students were expelled in 1896 bursting in on the women's life class, which was strictly segregated.^'' The fenders sought out Chase,

for of-

who was then considered a progressive and who no

longer taught at the League, which he regarded as too conservative. These

became the nucleus of the Chase School of Art.

students

Since 1899, ^^^ Y^^^ before Hopper's arrival. Miller had taught sketching, composition, and life classes, as well as illustration. He stressed spatial organization, recession,

the picture plane.

fluence on

much

work of his

modeling forms

Hopper

"in the round,"

later credited Miller

and

a consideration

of

with having "a fine sober in-

of our contemporary painting."^^ Miller might critique the

students in his

life class

daily as they

worked before

the model,

and then Chase would view the same work the following Monday.^^ Vachel Lindsay recounted that Miller told him that he believed ioned drawing than the school allows him to teach.

Walter Tittle described Miller

ments that students learn their

wings

either

in real flight.

"^^

to

in

"more old

fash-

"^"^

as "quite conservative then in his require-

draw

in a

sound, academic

way

before trying

Miller did not have the dominating personality of

Chase or Henri. Rockwell Kent

later

compared

their three teachers,

explaining that Chase had taught the students to use their eyes, Henri to enlist

their hearts, while Miller insisted that they use their heads.

that Miller

emphasized the importance of style

and saw

Kent believed

this as a corrective to

Henri's neglect of it.

Utterly disregardful of the emotional values which Henri sistent

was

so in-

upon, and contemptuous of both the surface realism and

tuosity of Chase, Miller,

an

either, exacted a recognition

elements of composition

—

artist in a far

of the

line

more precious

tactile qualities

and mass

—not

as a

vir-

sense than

of paint and of the

means toward

the

recreation of life but as the fulfillment of an end, aesthetic pleasure.^^

Miller's

emphasis on aesthetics may have reinforced Hopper's reluctance

to

discuss the implicit content of his work.

Hopper's students.

who

abilities

were recognized by both

Kent remembered him

as "the

his teachers

and

his fellow

John Singer Sargent of the

class"

could be counted upon to turn out "an obviously brilliant drawing" on

EDWARD HOPPER

Edward Hopper, [Nude Female Model Posing Art],

c.

igoo-igo^.

/

in Class,

The New York

School of

44

Defining the Talent: the occasions

8gg- 1 go6

1

when

mocked

the older students

a neophyte/'^

This was no

Hop-

sHght comphment, for Sargent was one of the painters most revered. per's

humor

won him

repeatedly

who

Rodin show

at the

friends.

He was

one of a group, which also

Tod Lindenmuth, and

included Tittle, Morie Ogiwara, tickets to a

45

I

National Arts Club in

others,

May

who

received

1903 from Henri,

The

believed that "Rodin had unusual understanding."^'**

next week.

"made some burlesques La Vieille Femme.^'^ Walter Pach recalled that Ogiwara, who took Rodin more seriously than Hopper, produced "drawings of immense fineness, of delicate sentiment and humor" and that Henri had singled out Ogiwara's drawing of a nude woman, claiming that "only a Japanese could have done it."^" Ogiwara left for Tittle noted that

Hopper and two other

students had

of Rodin," among them Hopper's drawing

Paris the following tor in his

own

autumn, where he became

right,

sculpture to Japan.

after the sculptor's

a disciple of Rodin's.

A

sculp-

he eventually pioneered in introducing Western-style

^'

Far from leaving school. Hopper was encouraged to stay by growing recognition. life

At the annual spring concours of

1903, he

won

a scholarship in

drawing along with Patrick Henry Bruce and Hilda Belcher. ^^ Bruce

left

school to go to Paris in late 1903; in a letter to Henri in February 1904 he said

had expected Hopper

that he

knowledging news received oil

ing of a

woman

from Henri.^^ Hopper had won

in a letter

du

painting, while

prize in

to receive the painting prize, evidently ac-

Bois got

first

mention.^"*

first

Then Hopper's draw-

opening an umbrella was selected by the faculty

for repro-

duction in an article on the school published in the Stretch Boo^ of April 1904.'''

to

Henri from

In another letter to

count of the year's

final concours,

Paris,

Bruce responded

to Henri's ac-

saying he wished he could have been there

have seen the work, "especially Hopper's," and inquiring: "What kind of

special scholarship did

he

get,

and

will

Hopper would continue

year?"'^' In fact.

he continue for

two more

at the

School another

years.

He

received not

only encouragement, scholarships, and prizes, but also the opportunity to teach at the school.

Further evidence survives of Bruce's affection for Hopper. for Paris, he

gave Hopper

an unfinished painting.

Bruce boldly, painted across painted

his own

entire back.

On

its

When

he

left

name Hopper

bears the

face, the thrifty

self-portrait in another direction, covering

ished portrait study.

Beginning

its

The canvas

up

Bruce's unfin-

^^

in the

cluding drawing from

autumn of life,

1904,

Hopper taught Saturday

painting, sketching,

classes, in-

and composition. His fellow

members for this all-day session were Douglas Connah, the ownerdirector, and Wladyslaw Theodor Benda, another Henri student and, later, an illustrator whom Hopper would encounter at the Penguin (>lub. Alfaculty

EDWARD HOPPER

though Saturday students were considered

Club Night,

embody

it

for

was George Bellows, who painted

in 1907/^

this

Hopper.

Brown's gymnasium with

recalled attending fights at

dent; perhaps

than the regulars,

less serious

appointment represented important recognition

He

4^

/

his first

a fellow stu-

boxing picture,

Although Hopper enjoyed boxing, which seemed

masculinity and power, he did not like to paint action.

humorous

He

to

confined

theme into a Even though he admitted attending baseball games as a child, he did not join Bellows, du Bois, Kent, and the others who fielded a baseball this interest to the

sketches, never developing the

painting.

team against National

their arch rivals, the

Academy of Design.

Art Students League, or the school of the

^'^

Student enthusiasm extended to

political

corridors and classrooms. Ibsen, Tolstoy, and

and Rockwell Kent remembered laire

and the French Decadents

that

and

aesthetic debates in the

Shaw were

of special interest,

"Eugene Sue, Verlaine, and Baude-

in general

were read and admired. "^^^ The

milieu was congenial to Hopper, with his reading of Russians in translation, particularly

Turgenev and

About

Tolstoy.^^

1903, he

made

several

pen and

ink drawings for poems by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven" and "The Bells."

Given the students'

attraction to the

French Symbolists and Decadents,

it is

Hopper reading Poe, whom the Symbolists admired more than any other American. Poe's theme of anguish at death in "The Raven," and the gloomy bird Hopper depicts, recall the absorption with not surprising to find

death already discernible in Hopper's childhood sketches and recurrent

throughout

his

life.

Neither ringleader nor hermit. Hopper was one of "the fellows" a friend

would miss when venturing abroad

to retrace the steps of Henri to Paris. ^"

could be counted on for a limerick and the regular charade to haze dents. Yet unlike

YMCA

some of

the

more independent

spirits,

He

stu-

lived at the

or boarding houses, he continued to go back each evening to his

mother's bed and board, at least for the

first

few

years. It

town

for the theater or perhaps even the school dances.

aged

to find a small studio

rible place, "^^

At

who

new

it

on Fourteenth

was not much of a

Street,

was hard

to stay in

When at last he man-

which he described

as "a ter-

habitation.

the school dances, female students were provided with cards for pre-

arranging a partner for each dance. "Ho" appears several times on two of

Emma

Story's

building.

opened

The

undated dance cards.

^"^

The

socials

were held

big sliding doors between the men's and

for the occasion; cookies

in the school

women's

and lemonade, but no

liquor,

Hopper, Glenn Coleman, and possibly others designed posters

and Crafts Dance,

a

masquerade

ball,

studios

were

were served. for the Arts

held there on January 29, 1905.

Defining the Talent:

Hopper,

1

8gg- 1 go6

as paintings

/

47

and drawings show, continued and developed

his

childhood fascination with theater, encouraged

Hopper probably went

now

Barrymore

to see Ethel

as

House, which his classmate Vachel Lindsay saw in

admired Ibsen

cially

ture of the

for portraying "a state of life

Hopper made

race."*^''

Norwegian playwright and he

mance

Emma Story recalled.^'

Bellows in 1910, the

the

possible at least to

it is

Henri portrayed

Ellen Ravencroft,

dock, and

He may

Emma, who would marry George women who frequented the New York

Women

the female

faced many obstacles to members of Henri's classes

achieved fame comparable to the men. In addition to

later,

as to the fu-

Colonial Vaudeville Theatre, a perfor-

at the

None of

whom

Doll's

1905/^ Henri espe-

and questions

continued to admire his works.

School in Hopper's day are difficult to trace.

Nivison,

A

Apart from

names of

success in the art world.

May

in Ibsen's

several early illustrations referring to the

later

have seen Charlie Chaplin

also

by Henri's enthusiasm.

Nora

in

student guise and

document

Emma

the lives of Edith Bell,

Madge Huntington, Edith Haworth,

Mary Rogers. Ethel Klinck Myers,

Amy Londoner,

Ethel Louise Pad-

like Nivison,

reer subordinated to that of her husband, the painter

and Josephine

Hopper married much

found her

own ca-

Jerome Myers. Nivison

never specified the exact years she studied at the school because she tried to conceal her age and pretended to others that she was

ward.

It is

however, that she was

certain,

when Henri

at the school

much younger

than Ed-

between 1904 and 1906,

painted her portrait (page 152).

Women students found Hopper attractive. Emma Story, who came from New Jersey, recalled that she first met him while crossing

Upper Montclair,

Hudson on

the

promising, she

the ferry. ^^

fell

Although she considered him talented and

for the attentions of the dashing, athletic Bellows.

also

knew Edith

met

Jo through her.

who like him came from Nyack, and he may have first Hopper asked another young woman, Hetty Dureyea, to

Bell,

pose for several portraits that he painted in

oil.

Dureyea was responsible

arranging an exhibition of Japanese prints that took place she apparently developed an interest in a fellow later

Hopper's mother wrote to him

spond that he was "sorry

him

Hopper

"a born crook.

to hear that

in Paris

at the school.

for

But

named Connaugh, because made him re-

with news that

Connaugh

has 'done' Hetty in," calling

"^^

Ever introspective. Hopper often contemplated himself at

this time, fre-

Numerous oil self-image, but many

quently filtering his observations through his sardonic wit. self-portraits reveal that

he reflected seriously upon his

caricature sketches on paper poke fun at his appearance.

himself as a diligent art student hard

at

He

wittily depicted

work, showing himself,

in

one ex-

ample, with his ungainly body chained to the fioor so that he could concen-

EDWARD HOPPER

on

trate

By

drawing board while seated on one of the uncomfortably low

his

were

stools that

to earn

/

a part

May

late

1905,

of the school furniture.

Hopper was growing

some money. Classmates such

restless in school

and was eager

Walter Tittle and Clarence Coles

as

had already begun working as illustrators. Tittle reported that "Ed Hopper down at school has decided to try illustrating. He has been in school for years."*^" Hopper began to work part-time for C. C. Phillips and Company, a New York advertising agency founded by Coles Phillips, who had attended the New York School of Art in 1905. Working in the new agency's Phillips

offices at 24 East

Twenty-second

Street,

Hopper produced cover designs

trade magazines such as the Bulletin of the

New

lustrated the advantages of electric light in the

for

York Edison, where he

il-

man

in

home

by depicting a

colonial dress struggling to read by candlelight. Phillips closed his agency the

next year to pursue his

Hopper's

when John

last

own

very successful career as an illustrator.

experience with a

new

commission. This was Hopper's

trait

he admired and

who,

like

later

first

meeting with Sloan, whose work

From March

wrote about.

14

through April

13,

Sloan,

Henri, had studied with Anshutz, took Henri's place criticizing the

men's morning life class.

teacher was in the spring of 1906,

Sloan taught classes for Henri to free his friend to work on a por-

He

tremendous

the afternoon portrait class,

life class,

and the men's evening

noted in his diary: "The pupils show the results of Henri's

ability as a teacher."*^^

Seven years had transformed Hopper's

generic talent into a vocation for painting, validated by intense practice and

exchange, by praise and scholarships from teachers, and by the affectionate

esteem of peers.

He had

ing twice as long at the

diligently studied

New

and found himself at home,

York School of Art

For the moment he had acquired

a palette.

More

as the

teachers reputedly said that he it

"is

the kind of artist

who could

and

Edmund

grown from

One

of his

not be taught

for himself."'^^

The example of teachers like Chase and Henri and Bois,

fit.

far-reaching, his philosophy

about his calling had been permanently enriched and shaped.

anything; he had to learn

stay-

founder thought

Graecen suggested the next

step.

friends like Bruce,

du

Hopper's horizons had

the world of illustrators to encompass Hals, Rembrandt, and

Velazquez, as well as the moderns like Courbet, Millet, Daumier, and Manet,

who were touted by Henri and Chase. His accomplishment in New York had who now understood more clearly where his talent

also educated his parents,

could lead. With their financial support. Hopper embarked for Paris in the fall

him

of 1906. Not even Henri and the intensity of student for the challenges to his character

capital of art.

and values

life

had prepared

that awaited in the

world

$[DUCTIV[ PARIS:

190H907

EDWARD ARRIVED

in the

twenty-four.

was not

It

IN

PARIS

to be a

York.

The

to la vie

1906,

grand tour conducted through

duction to academies or grandes personnes,

had been prone

autumn of

still less

Through

Jammes

lived with

would be

on October

two teenaged sons

the perfect

Edward found time by

24,

in

New

in the Baptist mission in Paris,

in

rooms

A widow named

at the top

of the build-

home away from home. Reaching the

which he addressed with nothing

of intro-

their church, Elizabeth

the Eglise Evangelique Baptiste, located at 48, rue de Lille.

ing. It

letters

an escapade. If Edward

boheme he would already have had occasion

family network was religious.

and Garret Hopper found Edward lodgings Louise

whcn he was

the thirtieth for his

so generic as

rue de Lille

first letter

home,

"Dear ones" or "Folks" or "My

dear parents" but simply to his mother:

I

write you this from

and plenty Paris

Madame Jammes where

I

have

a

good room

to eat.

is

a very graceful

and beautiful

city,

almost too formal and

sweet after the raw disorder of New York. Everything seems to have

been planned with the purpose of forming a most harmonious whole

which has

certainly been done.

Not even one

jarring note of color

is

/

49

EDWARD HOPPER

/

there to break the dismal tone of the house front, which sal

50

a univer-

is

grey or buff.

Then

too, the trains

and buses work with

which can only have been obtained

sion

The

remarkable

streets are

and

a regularity

preci-

after years of experience.

for their cleanliness

and

their shop-

windows which are undeniably attractive and seem to be right upon the street itself. As much time and thought seems to have been spent on every a

little

tobacco or butcher shop as

department store Every

priests,

in

street here

New is

is

spent for the

York and they are

alive

with

all sorts

nuns, students, and always the

all

window of

supremely clean.

and condition of people,

little

wide red

soldiers with

pants.

The Frenchmen for the most part are small and have poor physiques. You will not see here as you do on "Broadway" the finely young fellows with

built

their strong, well cut features.

French must conceal "the goods" somehow or they are on the spot

when

However, the

other, as

we know

the time comes, in spite of their litde

beards & long shoes.

The

climate here seems very mild to me.

I

do not believe they

have the biting cold of New York, nor do you see here the deep blue sky and gorgeous sparkle of color

seems I

to be pitched in a

have

run

just

to the

part very bad, although

shows I

at

we have

at

home. Everything

milder key.

"Autumn Salon" and found it for much more liberal in its aims

it is

the

most

than the

home.

hope you are doing

as well as could be expected

Your son &

and remain

heir

E. Hopper'

Calmly Edward supposes pressions of Paris.

Edward

that his mother's real interest will be in his im-

Having sought

looks outward to

make

to reassure her that

he

is

properly settled,

his first sketch of the city.

Almost by the

book, he checks off the topics expected of the traveler: the general form and color,

some

particulars of transport, streets, shops, picturesque types, the

French physique and character, climate, glance at the art scene.

light

The whole and some

and color again, with

a first

sound more than

a little

parts

academic, yet hints emerge already of his particular vision. For the

first

time

Nyack shows what he had seen and felt in the passage to New York "raw disorder." The consciousness of contrast quickens his imagination. Similar shocks and images of contrast would accompany each further the boy from

—

Seductive Paris:

I

go6- 1 goy

crossing and confrontation in his

and

dissociation

5/

/

The shocks would

life.

register in his art as

ironic dissonance.

The contrast between New York and Paris organizes other perceptions. Edward picks out that which merits praise in Paris by explicit or implicit powith

larity

New

opposite in

its

urban

details of daily

painter but fascinated

York: transport, the

ity

human

quirks and dramas, right

Edward

with the

contrasts the

street reality

the time comes."

meant

to

reversed.

"Broadway"

With stage

of scrawny French

Edward,

his usual

penchant for carica-

image of American masculin-

who nonetheless "are on the spot may well have

the buff of military history,

underscore a contrast between unprepossessing physique and na-

tional military prowess. Yet his language, structurally

and metaphorically,

with the theme of French renown in love. His irony brings him willyhe nor his mother would wish to address di-

nilly to a subject that neither rectly.

was

Sexuality

there, always, in expectation because of the

image of French mores and bohemian tle

the

to the soldier in red pants.

when

flirts

—

shops^

that would have escaped notice by an academic Hopper and other students of Henri. New types of

On one score the values get ture,

and

life

people strike the eye that always sought out

down

streets,

men

The

prompted elaborate

in curious shoes

New York

Paris.

that grazed the issue of sexuality.

first

recall

And

lit-

of theatrical images in

this

deeper and more provocative spurs to imagination lay

common

glimpse of strange

was only the in

start.

Far

wait and not only in

the streets outside the Baptist mission.

how far he was from imagining the state of his

Edward's even tone shows mother's feelings,

would drive his

her.

how deep

her anxiety would run and to what lengths

Three days before Edward found time

mother had written

in a

way

that

provoked

a

it

for his first dispatch,

mixture of affection and

ironical self-defense in another letter:

I

received yours of the twenty-seventh and read the contents care-

fully.

I

sistent

find in

my room in so

it

a tendency

towards sentimentality which

with your hardy Anglo-Saxon nature. is

told with

much

The

little

tenderness and pathos, but

is

not con-

incident of

if

you

persist

exposing your true heart, our friendship must cease.

Hoping

that

you are bearing

it

bravely,

Your male

I

remain

child

E. Hopper.

Invoking

his mother's

place for stern

"hardy Anglo-Saxon nature," a cultural common-

and repressive character,

in

order to check her feelings, Ed-

EDWARD HOPPER

ward

/

betrays

his. Later, as

would

its

presence in himself.

same stereotype

Edward's personal and

The Hoppers'

I

artistic

of both.

this winter.

if she

write

On November know

you

let

that

hope you are improving and

I

I

am

cares to as

I

went

before.

him

The

sure

it

I

16,

am

he answered simply:

well and having a

will be able to

would do you good.

me

as

I

Edward

Tell

go some-

Marion

never

to

Do not

felt better in

Edward

felt

am

weighing and revising

to hyperbole,

at

Madam

and do not need

Hopper redoubled her

Jammes,

as

a studio as yet.

would be pleasant were

it

I

view of

doubts.

One week

later,

have been painting out-of-doors

The weather

don't seem to

The

mind

it

has been very mild and

down at the The Parisiens

not for the rain which comes

most unexpected moments, even out of

alive

his

obliged to write yet again:

still

times.

sweeping and

assessment was hardly well calculated to have the

desired effect, for Elizabeth

I

du Bois

an obstacle to

illness.

better" sounds uncharacteristically

felt

confident. Paris tempts that

as

it

life.''

For him, "never

all

his friend

see

should like to hear from her or father.

give yourself a lot of useless worry about

my

life,

and

growth.^

write you this in order to

good time.

in his character

plan had reckoned with neither anxiety nor

to realize the gravity

where

uneasy with emotions, hers and

is

he hesitated on the threshold of adult

identify the

was slow

He

52

though

a clear sky.

as they are in the streets

people here in fact seem to

and

live in the streets,

from morning until night not as they are

in

cafes at

all

which are

New York with that

never ending determination for the "long green," but with a pleasure loving it

crowd

that doesn't care

what

it

does or where

goes, so that

it

has a good time.

Remember me

to

your husband and

Yours

The young man's attention

truly, E.

tell

Marion

to write.

Hopper.^

has clearly shifted from the general

and the scattered Parisian types

to the

phenomenon of

crowds, and to their motives. Again his vision doubles, comparing

and

Paris.

The "Anglo-Saxon"

harmony

the cafe and the

New York

sense of discipline and duty bristles at the

spectacle of people bustling about not for business but for pleasure.

Edward's dispatches did not

avail.

confidence. Losing faith in her Baptist friends, credentials, until

Edward

felt

Hopper suffered a crisis of she kept demanding further

Elizabeth

driven to write his

sister:

Seductive Paris: i()o6- 1 goj

My

/

5^

dear Marion:

Mother has been

Jamme

[sic],

that

I

Madam

so persistent in her inquiries about

feel that

I

should answer although

an awful

it's

bore.

Madam Jamme

think at one time was in very good circum-

I

through some misfortune has

stances, but

everything. This

lost

misfortune drove her mother insane and finally killed her. lieve,

was

also responsible for the death of her

that she has suffered a great deal.

same be-

It, I

husband. So you see

Her bad fortune however has not

embittered her as she has an extremely kind heart and a very fine sense of humor.

very

boarder]

Her

sons,

who are sixteen and

and look much

tall

is

Suffice to Louise

it

The

little

eighteen years old are

French lady [another

not French but an Irish American whose

Francisco. She has lived in

long time.

older.

I

hope

this will suffice

regarding

my

domestic

did not. Elizabeth had the minister's wife,

Jammes, who replied reassuringly

at the

home

is

in

Madam Jamme

Europe and known

Ada

San

for a

affairs.^'

Saunier, write

beginning of December:

More than a month has passed over since your young friend Mr. Hopper has arrived in our home. We all like him & we think that he is a good American fellow. He seems happy in beautiful Paris & has begun his work & as his dear mother is so far away Miss Cuniffe [the Irish American boarder] & I try to be mothers to him so that he must not ever feel homesake. if the

wether were only

in this season

We three went together to Sevre on the boat,

of the year

must be contented

we would go to ever so many places, but, the days begin to be short & wise people

fine

in all

circumstances even in

la belle

France.

Mr. Hopper's mother must not be anxious of her son for he very quiet

&

so reserve

&

is

&

has a most delicate soul of refinement

with his sweet smile & his true look in his eyes will over the globe. For his mother's sake

I

sincerely

make

friends

hope that he

all

will be-

come master over master is a son not the crown of its mother's head? Our best souvenirs to your dear husband. ... shall write a line to Mrs Hopper.^ I

Nyack and two in Paris, Edward was well tended. city would profit from the enthusiasm of eager and gen"kind heart and a very fine sense of humor" as he said of

Between one mother His discovery of the erous guides, with a

Louise Jammes.

The

in

flutter

of confidences the boy inspired took on a

own. Elizabeth wrote Louise, who replied

in

life

February of the next year:

of its

EDWARD HOPPER

/

Your

letter

buts,

you should had long ago the acknowledgement of thanks &

deserved an earlier answer, but, were

gratitude for having placed on this

not for

it

Hemisphere such

5^

the

all

a fine boy as

your son. I

Lady & her name

we

who makes

have a friend is

home with us she is an American well we call your son mama's boy &

her

Miss Cuniffe

My

both are his mothers since his arrival.

two boys

are also very

how well he looks. He man you would be astonished to hear him converse if he continues you may call him with the time Victor Hugo. Dear Mrs Hopper why don't you come to Paris it would be fond of Mr. Hopper. You ought to see your son

parlez frangais like a french

accompany your son in our Musees to admire Chef d'Oeuvre of the ancients gods & also to bow to Luxor have

recreation for you to the

you not

your Central Park?

his brother in

Should you

see

Mrs or Mr Saunier

them our most gracious souvenirs

One whose

a sister in the

Mr. Hopper kisses to his dear

.

.

.

would you kindly present

&

until then

blood was shed for

ever

more

me

believe

us.

already in bed otherwise he would send love

is

mama &

At twenty-four, Edward was

papa &

still

&

sister.^

a "fine

boy" and "mama's boy," as indeed he

perceived himself, fortunate to have fallen in with friends not only affectionate but generous,

Louise

proud of French culture and eager

Jammes turned out

show

to

it

around.

more than his family had bargained. No one Hopper to Paris, nor that the intended stu-

to be

projected the transfer of Elizabeth

dio

would fade before

the unexpected comforts of home on the rue de Lille.

Edward opened an almost ting over an illness that "I

hope you are

note: "I

had required both

well, fat,

was glad

and

spise in

a nurse

jolly as usual.

to learn that

you are

What

tolerably stupid at home."^^^

in

"'^

New

A

ports of the city

his solicitude

and the weather,

he struck a nasty

York again,

as

it

must be

mother both found

in

his re-

about his person, which he

parried, not about to bare his soul:

You ask me always and

my

to tell

about myself and

clothes that concerns you,

—

suppose

therefore

—

on underwear

1.

buttons are

2.

heavy underwear

3.

light

still

I

underwear

is

fast

still

in

going

in-

to de-

New York, is not clear.'^

and expressed impatience with

in her inquiries

get-

and confinement indoors:

bit later,

the son and the

Nyack, and where Elizabeth took refuge

His mother answered

mother was

jocular vein seeing that his

to pieces

good condition.

it is

my

as follows:

health

Seductive Paris:

i

go6 -igoy

55

/

4.

new

5.

old clothes are fast

necktie must be bought soon

becoming covered with paint

—green

spots predominating (owing to spring) 6.

have turned band on hat

7.

hairs have ceased to

8.

had moustache

9.

cut

it

10. this is 1

1.

for

out in such large quantities

fall

two weeks

off it

[sketch of mustache]

have been darning hose (which

is

proper side to do

it

on?

—

have tried both inside and out. 12. I

am

fat in the face

never have received a

able that the

French

hieroglyphics, or

In either case

any time

The

ironic

to

I

from "Charity,"

so

it is

very prob-

postal officials have been unable to decipher her

it is

very possible

it

has gone on to China or Japan.

would not encourage her

waste on disagreeable old

charm of

shadowed by

letter

his checklist,

with

to write again as

I

haven't

ladies.'"

its

touches of

the close. Breaking his usual decorum,

self-satire, gets

Edward

over-

refers to his

long-widowed grandmother Charity Blauvelt Hopper, enclosing her

first

name in quotes as if to suggest that her personality did not live up to it. His manner jars, and his tone matches the "awful bore" and "intolerably stupid" of previous letters in suggesting a dimension of Hopper very different from the "mama's boy" admired by Louise Jammes for his "delicate soul." Years later Alfred Barr, after interviewing Hopper, reported that he had "lived in a respectable

French

literature,

French family studying French, reading extensively

and avoiding bohemia."'^ The painter himself once admit-

ted that his only concession to his surroundings near the Latin Quarter thin red "it

mustache which he grew

looked

in

in his

home

base,

encouraged by

palette. It

weather, as

was

a

much

as his training

Hopper work out-

with Henri and Chase, affected his

wet and cool autumn, even

for Paris.

stances ofla belle France, he started by painting at

of the courtyard, the interior staircase leading to

view of windows and

a

mansard roof seen

American version of Second Empire

Adapting

to the

circum-

home: small somber panels

Mme. Jammes's apartment, a window railing. In the roof,

across a

he found a familiar shape that he had admired

From

a

his solicitous guides,

gradually reached out, though he soon learned that rain could limit

The

was

April 1907 but soon shaved off because

silly."'"^

Secure

side.

in

in

Nyack, on houses

built in the

style just before his birth.

the rue de Lille, he ventured into the near neighborhood, turning

the corner into the rue de Bac

and walking the block

to the Seine,

where he

EDWARD HOPPER

painted the

/

embankments with bridges and

pedestal seen before a corner of the Louvre,

dered his

in a

stairways, a sculpture on a

and

around the He du

is

from the top of the

most paintable

a

particularly

city,

upon which was the

Cite,

streets are very old

story

which gives them

hundreds of pipes and chimney pots

Mansard type and streets,

a

most imposing and

The

either of grey slate or zinc.

and the open windows of the houses

Even

On

few yards distance. This may

must be seen

to be

into the air giving

roofs are

On

the

a

day

all

of the

that's

over-

at the

end of the

in the trees,

and under

It's

man's coat becomes a deep blue grey

a

all

mean nothing

could give you a glimpse of the real Paris it

up

stick

same blue-grey permeates everything.

the arches of the bridges. at a

the

shops and stores beneath are dark red or

the sky line a most peculiar appearance.

cast, this

on and

Here

first Paris.

green, contrasting strongly with the plaster or stone above. roofs

ren-

and narrow and many of the houses slope back first

The wine

solid appearance.

latter,

impression of

reflects the

that he described for his sister:

must know

Paris as you

The

a street scene.

simple but dramatic blue-gray tonality,

new surroundings

56

understood.

And

it

I

to you, but

would be doing

will

well.

if

I

For

have a different mean-

ing for each.

Yours

truly. Ed.'^

After the academic generality of his

month working with

and colors

Parisian shapes

with

New York.

to

what

lies

more

that he

is

the painter has spent the

so absorbed in the concreteness of

no longer thinks primarily of comparison

him

that he speaks in terms of an ideal, a

how "paintable" the city is in itself. This is what sweeps him mind. He passes from an academic sense of general har-

his

specific observation, in the

manner encouraged by Henri, of

The

loving detail of his report reveals

around him

acute visual sensibility:

him than

first bulletin,

By now he

Paris so captivates

kind of absolute,

up and focuses

mony

his eyes.

whom

close to hand.

what Hopper saw usually became more important

Hopper's eyes and their

affair

with Paris preempt the next week's

letter

as well:

Here

in the

Grand

Palais

mination of the building

on the self

for

he met or what he did.

Eiffel

we have an automobile show, and

is

most

tower was playing

could not be seen

comet away up

it

beautiful. Last night the search light all

over the

city,

looked like nothing so

in the air.

I

the illu-

and

as the

much

do not believe there

is

tower

it-

as a gigantic

another

city

on

Seductive Paris:

i

go6 -igoj

/

57

earth so beautiful as Paris, nor another people with such an appreci-

There

ation of the beautiful as the French.

always some sort of an

is

exhibition going on here either of pictures sculpture or the industries

and everybody I

wish that

make you

could

I

which they hold them.

—

it is

hard

theatres

its

the importance the public

Coming from

a place

where everybody

des Capucines

and coloured

another wonderful place

is

The crowd

lights.

here

at night

so thick in the

is

also lined with cafes

evening that one can hardly get through.

It is

where the Demimondaines

hatted boulevardiers.'^'

To Marion

the previous

sit

with the

more than

visual terms, the

dimension

colors along streets

mother he had sketched,

to his

crowds forever looking

in social

Now

for pleasure.

he

admire, again by contrast with America: appreci-

to

and veneration

ation of the beautiful

silk

week he had described forms and

imagined virtually empty. Earlier

finds a social

in

for

is

to grasp.

The Boulevard with

know

to

alike.

have for the people and the veneration and respect

institutions

himself

and the poor

interested the rich

is

At the same

for institutions of culture.

time he makes no secret of the growing vividness and concreteness of his perception of street

life:

the animated

and illuminated boulevard, and now the

defining form of its inhabitants. Scarcely into his second month, his eye fixes

on

a set of figures that

would have

a long

and intense history

in his

imagina-

He knows

their

names

and the couples of the demimonde.

tion: the cafe

French. As for the great tower, unlike his contemporary, the French ernist painter

Robert Delaunay, Hopper preferred

painted or sketched

invisible

mod-

and never

it.

new

Spring gave

it

in

play to the eye: Straw hats had been out for about a

week. The Tuileries Gardens were very fine with the sun and blue sky: "in

whole

fact the

parasols."''

We

city

is

alive

with color now.

The most tumultuous

have

just

sight

The women have

came

blue and red

latest:

had the carnival of the Mi-Careme,

it is

one of the im-

portant fetes of the year. Everyone goes to the "Grands Boulevards"

and

lets

himself loose.

The confetti

the dust arising from this

day

—

this

four inches deep in the street,

the air so that

it

seems

to be a

foggy

dust enveloped crowd and the confetti falling every where

like colored

too

fills

lies

narrow

snow for

its

is

a sight unique.

The crowd

finds the sidewalks

horseplay and takes to the road also.

ture these in costume, they are not for the

most

Do

not pic-

part, but here

and

two

girls

they you will see them, perhaps a clown with a big nose or

with bare necks and short skirts trying to escape the confetti which

EDWARD HOPPER

/

dozen bearded frenchmen are playfully forcing them

half a

Here too wearing

are always the students

their

— perhaps

gowns, and endeavoring

wild bohemianism

formidable after

—but mere boys

to

a

to eat.

crowd of art students

keep up

for the

5«

their reputation of

most part and not very

all.

The parade of the queens of the halles (markets) is also one of the They go through the streets on various floats some are pretty but look awkward in their silk dresses and crowns, particu-

—

events.

larly as the

broad sun displays their defects

—perhaps

a

neck too thin

or a painted face which shows ghastly white in the sunlight.

Withal

a tractable

it is

bounds of decency

step the

and peaceful crowd and does not over-

—

wide here) nevertheless there

Given the same

comport

liberties,

I

(possibly because the is little

am

bounds are very

drunkenness and

afraid an

less fighting.

American crowd would not

itself so well.^^

May was over, Edward had one last spectacle to report: and queen of Norway on parade instead of the queens of the halles: Before

Their entry was quite an occasion and

many

troops along the route.

good showing with

who

the infantry

The houses are flag,

and

however,

a beautiful sight.

The French

their helmets

and

are usually small

never seen.

There were

make

cavelry always

cuirasses, quite in contrast to

The "grand

The German

old rag" shows itself here

there.^^

This spectacle does not bring out the moral censor and the defensive as

to a fies

a

Edward can

Carnival had.

since

boyhood and remark on the

political

omen

the sign of home by playing with the phrase

grand old

of the absent

flag.

original

in Paris a

found

it

for the

agenda included not only the

fall in

with the

local

week before he had

was

Babbe, which that he

penchant "just

run

city

He resorts he identi-

patriotic song, "It's

but

a variation

Among

to the

Edward came

the thirty

'Autumn

in art school.

He had

not

Salon' and

his first extensive ex-

works

in Courbet's ret-

of Frans Hals's grotesque old

Hopper had sketched

admired Courbet,

its art.

for exhibitions.

most part very bad." What he saw was

posure to Courbet and Cezanne. rospective

from the

as

him

flag."

predisposed to

been

ironist

focus on the uniforms that had fascinated

mild irony only where affections are most nearly involved,

The

a

and have rather ugly uniforms.

decorated with the flags of the nations. is

the king

woman

Malle

Years later he admitted

citing his mechanical strength, but disliked

Seductive Paris:

I

gob-K^oy

who was

Cezanne,

/

represented in the Salon hy ten works, which

thought hicked substance and had

"Many Cezannes

plained:

a

59

Hopper

papery quahty."" Another time, he com-

are very thin.""'

As Hopper developed

own

his

volumetric sense, he rejected Cezanne's flattened forms in favor of Courbet's

more

traditional

modeling

in

order to delineate conventional relationships

That same quick tour exposed Hopper

in space.

quet, Felix Vallotton,

to

works by Albert Mar-

and Walter Richard Sickert, three

artists

who

used

themes that Hopper subsequently explored. Marquet presented prosaic views of Paris and

summary treatment of figures;"

Sickert and Vallotton of-

Hopper also had the work of several young American artists who managed his fond classmate, Patrick Henry Bruce, along with

fered intimate interior views with psychological drama.

opportunity to see the to get into the Salon:

Max Weber and Maurice Sterne. Bruce was among the first people Hopper saw

outside the rue de Lille.

Before he had been in Paris two weeks, he visited Bruce several times, one

The

evening as a guest for dinner.^^ veteran of the

year before Bruce had married another

New York School, Helen Kibbey. The couple lived in a charm-

ing garden on the boulevard Arago, where they entertained generously on a

modest budget. After Christmas, Hopper wrote have been very cordial whenever

I

to his

mother: "The Bruces

have called and Bruce

is

very

much more

agreeable than formerly.""^ At the Bruces', Americans had a habit of drop-

ping

"Here

by.

ness,""^

wrote

was talked of

art

Guy Pene du

called

back prematurely

close,

were frequent

Putnam

Daniel

mund

visitors:

Brinley,

Walter Pach,

with no funny busiin art school

a classmate,

Arthur Burdett Frost,

Jr.,

in Paris

December

but

now

father's death. Others, less

Maurice Sterne,

and Samuel Halpert. Edwith his wife, Ethol, a few 1906.

The Bruces

followed

with a son in April. Domestic focus pinched hospitality and shrank ca-

Du

Bois, of

have been a better In the

met

French heritage and

facilitator

autumn of

art.

artists

lively,

open demeanor, would

and guide.

1906, around the time of Edward's

the celebrated Stein family

Leo and Michael, and Michael's ern

Edward's familiar

prior to the birth of their son in

maraderie.

first

Bois, also

America because of his

Graecen, another classmate, settled

months suit

to

seriously, frowningly,

arrival, the

Bruces

from Baltimore. Gertrude, her brothers

wife, Sarah,

all

admired and

collected

mod-

Gertrude and Leo held salons on Saturday evenings that many young

attended.

work of the

Hopper

later credited

Bruce with introducing him

to the

Impressionists in Paris, "especially Sisley, Renoir, and Pissarro,"^^

and certainly could have met the Steins through Bruce, had he been so clined.

"Whom

Gertrude

did

Stein, but

to the cafes at night

I

I

meet? Nobody," he

later

remarked.

don't recall having heard of Picasso at

and

sit

and watch.

I

went

"I'd

all.

I

in-

heard of used to go

to the theatre a litde. Paris

had

EDWARD HOPPER

/

60

no great or immediate impact on me."^^ Another time he repeated that he had heard of Stein, but

About

insisted: "I wasn't

the only important person

I

know me.

important enough for her to

knew was

Jo Davidson,

and he was

will-

me only because I knew the girl he was going to marry, met her going over."^^ The woman in question was Yvonne de Kerstrat,

ing to look at

on the boat

an American

actress.

Often, the young American art schools,

They

Dame

never mentioned exhibitions.

Champs sponsored

des

this organization, yet

American

Max Weber,

son and

artists

abounded

Edward

Steichen, and

by

he must have visited

Lyman

at the

David-

MacDonald-

Sayen, Morton Schamberg,

commu-

In 1906, the expatriate

were talking about the work of Whistler (dead

of his mother they studied

numerous

its

in Paris at the time: besides Jo

Abraham Walkowitz.

on the

a social club

Rodman Wanamaker. Hopper

there were Lyonel Feininger, Stanton

Wright, John Marin, Alfred Maurer,

nity

famous

to Paris attended

American Art Association,

also congregated at the

rue Notre

who went

artists

such as the Academic Julian or even the Ecole des Beaux Arts.

in 1903),

whose

Luxembourg Gallery along with

portrait

the Caille-

botte collection of Impressionists.

American and English

artists

frequented the Cafe du

Dome

in

Mont-

parnasse, within walking distance from Hopper's place on the rue de Lille.

Unlike the long evenings with the Bruces, where talk flowed frowningly, with no funny business," and babies were on the talk by the artists in the cafes often ran to the turbulent

with the mistresses they found grisettes.

Cafe

its

dramas they created

among young French working

girls, les

was bohemian and sexual drama was a staple. It is no acciHopper so pointedly deprecated bohemia in writing, while

life

dent, then, that

taking

"seriously,

way or just born,

women

as frequent subjects for his art.

Fascinated, but divided between longing and fear,

Hopper made

a

pen-

woman endowed with a devil's tail and purrecalls the carnival sight of men throats of scantily clad girls. He also depicted a

and-ink sketch of a shapely nude

sued by several overly eager men: his scenario forcing confetti

down

the

nude standing provocatively by an open window, holding her hand face in a contemplative pose that anticipates certain

maturity.

The

images

to her

in paintings

of his

sketches confirm the impression conveyed by one or two

ters that sexuality

was on

his

mind. Despite

his strict

let-

upbringing, or perhaps

because of it, he was particularly drawn and repelled by the variety of prostitutes in the streets of Paris.

While Louise Jammes was writing tural values of Paris

was sizing up

to Elizabeth

Hopper about

the cul-

and the refmed soul of "mama's boy," Edward's eye

les filles

de joie.

He

did not

come

to the

encounter free from

prejudice or expectation. Experience with French art and literature and

Seductive Pa ris: igob-igoy

with

New

York conditioned what he perceived and drew. At

the United States, noisy

6

/

this

time

in

pubHc campaigns against prostitution were being

organized. Antivice agitators held outdoor prayer meetings and marches in the heart of urban red-hght

women

the importation of

would do

so again in 1907.

districts."'^

Congress passed legislation banning

for the purposes of prostitution in 1903

During the

of art school,

later years

and

Edward had

rented a studio on Fourteenth Street, where solicitation was aggressive and frequent.^"

But the Anglo-Saxon puritan

in

him could only wonder

at the

ously lax attitude toward prostitution he found in France in 1906. titutes'

demeanor

Hopper represented

also impressed him.

conspicu-

The

staring right out at the spectator, the artist himself, with a distinctly

hither look.

The

sketches suggest that Paris produced in

pros-

several in cafes,

him

a

come-

kind of sexual

awakening.

As

often

when

facing an excess of emotion,

ture, using watercolors to depict various types

able

women: La

Pierreuse, Fille de Joie,

Demi-mondaine. La pierreuse

is

Hopper

resorted to carica-

and degrees of sexually

Type de Belleville, La

Grisette,

avail-

and Une

slang for a street-walker, "she of the paving

stones." Fille de joie, "daughter of joy," refers to a tart, prostitute, or

any

woman of loose morals. Type de Belleville refers to a disheveled working-class woman from the colorful area that became for Hopper the French equivalent of the New York district that attracted artists like John Sloan, who also depicted prostitutes.^'

La grisette was

a

term with roots

dustrial development,

which attracted

work. The sobriquet refers a milliner, tain sexual

who

in the social

typically

to a

came

rural labor to the cities in search of

working

to Paris

girl,

usually a

young dressmaker or

from rural communities where

freedom was countenanced, but

would naturally ensue. Translated

displacement caused by in-

in a

a cer-

framework where marriage

to the isolation

and anonymity of the

city,

where bourgeois morality generally prevailed, these country mores conferred on

their bearers a

Latin Quarter,

The

romantic aura

who

in the eyes

of the students and

artists

of the

sought them out as mistresses.^^

easy virtue of Rigolette

Paris by

Eugene Sue,

scribed

and expressed

la grisette

had been featured

in Mysteries

a novel read by the boys at art school. ^^ fear of female sexuality,

Sue

of

also de-

which he embodied

in the

who exercises power to dominate and subdue the The theme clearly preoccupied Edward, to judge from

character of Cecily,

de-

fenseless male.^"*

the

woman with the devil's tail and his boyhood sketches of the enwoman and frail man. The t^xm grisette even migrated into English,

sketch of the gulfing in

popular accounts such as the chapter "The Ghost of the Grisette"

George Augustus

Sala's Paris Herself Again:

in

EDWARD HOPPER

/

Edward Hopper, Joie,

62

de

Fille

igo6-igoy. Watercolor

on composition board,

iiVh

X

gV/' (^0.2X2^.8 cm.).

pi^gjtAm^

,-V"«

Her manner of walking was matchlessly graceful and agile. The narrow streets of old Paris were, in those days, infamously paved. There was no foot pavement. The kennel was often in the centre of the street,

and down

it

rolled a great black torrent of impurities fear-

and smell. The manner in which the grisette would way over the jagged stones, and the dexterity with which would avoid soiling her neat shoes and stockings when ventur-

some

to sight

.

.

.

pick her

she

ing on the very brink of that crashing plashing kennel, were

won-

derous and delightful to view. She had an inimitable way, too, of

whisking the end of her

skirt over her

Sala also discussed other Parisian types that sergents de

ville,

Not only

arm

as she trotted along.^^

Hopper

portrayed, including the

the concierge, and the demi-mondaine.

literature,

prentice painter.

As

but art suggested the theme of prostitution to an ap-

a student,

Hopper based

a sketch in

pen and ink on

a re-

production of Manet's Olympia, that scandalous Parisian courtesan. At the Metropolitan

Museum, he had

also sketched the seductive figure of

Henri

Seductive Paris: i()o6- 1 goj

I

compared

Regnault's Salome, which had been in Paris in the Salon of

1870.^''

that

works by Toulouse-Lautrec,

appeared

appeared

in satirical

when

exhibited

Besides these two admired images, there were

representations of prostitutes everywhere the salons to

to a courtesan

^S

magazines

— from

the academic paintings in

as well as in

many of the caricatures

like L'Assietteau Beurre.^^ Prostitutes also

by Honore de Balzac, Victor Hugo, and Emile Zola. For

in novels

an avid reader like Hopper, books raised expectations through names that experience would connect with sights. Within a

month of his

arrival,

had recognized and was describing the demi-mondaines with the

Edward

"silk hat-

ted boulevardiers" to his mother.

Edward

often

went

observe and to sketch the pleasure seekers

to cafes to

he described as just people smoking, talking, or at their ease.

quick pen-and-ink figure sketches ionable

women

to soldiers

phrases such as "Tout

le

and

priests.

monde

He

wooden

He

shoes,

Occasionally he included

suit especially to dress

an elegantly coiffed

cummerbunds, and

berets.

French

a

in

to

go

to the

woman peering through river in their

workman, an

known

ouvrier

as a Piou-Piou,

cavalry officer in full regalia.

visual excitement he expressed in letters led to a

drawings,

French

A more finished group of pen-and-

with cigarette and bottle of cheap wine, the soldier

The

up

loved to watch the boatmen working along the

ink sketches of individual figures includes a muscular

and

little

he sketched himself in hats such as boaters

even purchased a tweed

opera.^^ In a theater, he recorded

her lorgnette.

with images that range from fash-

debarque" or "Les Americans." Assimilating

at least imaginatively to the scene,

or derbies.

filled

He made many

which he combined

of white paint.

He

number of elaborate wash, and touches

pencil, Conte, charcoal,

focused on groups of people in typical settings: travelers

boarding the train in a railroad station, poor people drinking beneath a bridge along the Seine, elegant shoppers along a street with

He drew

kiosk and mansard-roofed houses. its

way along

the

narrow Paris

street,

the Pantheon looming above the

poignant

is

a

drawing

figures standing

who

has

entitled

to death

from

characteristic

seen from the Seine. By far the most

the Quai:

on the walkway along the

jumped

its

horse-drawn carriage making

and elsewhere the impressive dome of

city, as

On

a

a bridge,

The

river

Suicide,

from which

down. Hopper's choice of the macabre subject

which depicts four

around the body of someone a spectator

now

Thomas Hood's poem about suicide, "The Bridge of Sighs." Ever alert ference, in

York,

manners

as in appearance,

Edward ventured

The church and

looks

recalls his earlier illustration

to dif-

and disaffected from the values of New

a political report:

the state are getting into another

the papers are full of

it.

Would

I

of

read French

mix-up here and

& could

tell

you about

EDWARD HOPPER

Edward Hopper, On

/

the Quai:

ly'Ax i^V/'(^^.^ Xjy.i cm.).

The

Suicide, igo6. Conte, wash,

and touches of white,

^4

Seductive Paris: In tact

it.

I

go6- 1 goj

/

65

though the French are a very mild mannered people, they

burst into flame at the slightest provocation.

was nearly

the professors of the Sorbonne

some unguarded words about Joan

—

A

short time ago one of

killed by the students for

of Arc, thus

do they

fight for the

home who

only

ar-e

(This controversy over Joan of Arc was instigated by the right,

who

tried to

sake of an idea

roused

when

turn her into an

quite in contrast to those at

their pockets are

endangered.

^'^

confronted Catholics with the

asset for the Nationalists: they

had been burned by the Church, and Royalists with the king's

fact that she

abandonment of her Expanding on

cause."*")

his

judgment of French

character,

Hopper wrote

to his

father:

The workman

here seems to be in a perpetual state of protest against

employer and the administration

his

this winter, electricians, bakers,

The Frenchman in say, if

not with

fact

He

—

a hard

strikes of

man

to

keep

down and

will

cafes.

have his

such as anti-

it,

which were torn down by the

police re-

the signers of which were arrested.'*^

sent his father a broadside

districts

announcing

a lecture by the

prominent

liber-

and anarchist Sebastien Faure attacking "La Dictature

tarian philosopher

Clemenceau" and reported of the

many

therefore the

permission, then without

official

militia proclamations

cently

is

—

and even the waiters of the

that the notice

of Paris near the

wall.""*"

"was given

to

me

at Belleville

one

Faure's struggle against the con-

of authority appealed to Hopper's contrarian nature. Hopper also

straints

asked his family whether they had formed an opinion on "the Japanese question," noting "I

bunch of them place.

dently

I

have none. There are in a cafe a

many

Hopper had

lost

saw

a

it

and about the music. ""^^ Evi-

touch with his Japanese classmate, Morie Ogiwara,

also then living in Paris."*^

the intensive local

I

few nights ago, and they looked strangely out of

wondered what they thought about

who was

Japanese students here.

His comments were made

news coverage of the defeat of France's

ally,

in response to

Russia, in the

Russo-Japanese War.

Taking advantage of the inexpensive quented the

and saw

ment

as

theater,

much

as

Julius Caesar at the is

he had

Odeon

—

the Theatre Frangais.'"*^

quelin in Cyrano de Bergerac

in

ticket prices.

New York:

"I

Hopper

also fre-

have been to the opera

they are both supported by the govern-

Another time he reported:

— he looked

pretty

good

the celebrated French actor, Contant-Benoit Coquelin.

"I

saw Co-

to me,"^^' referring to

EDWARD HOPPER

Spring turned Hopper's somber palette

to lighter tones

painting clothes with green. After a cold, wet winter, the especially glorious, the sunlight incredible:

anything

I

light

the bridges, there

warmed, he wrote:

am

"I

By

The

his

new

season seemed

was

different

was

a certain luminosity.'"*^

noted: "Paris

is

his easel

this time.

reflected light.

As

the weather

parks.'"*'^

He

usu-

along the Seine.

Hopper was showing

pastel tonalities of Renoir, Sisley,

lighter palette,

from

very beautiful in the sun and the

people never miss a clear day to be out in the street and the

up

and covered

well, in fact I've never felt better."^^ Delighted to be

work outdoors, he

ally set

66

had known. The shadows were luminous, more

Even under able to

"The

/

away from

the influence of the Impressionists.

and Monet encouraged

He

the teaching of Henri.

move

his

to a

later recalled:

I went to Paris when the pointillist period was just dying out. I was somewhat influenced by it. Perhaps I thought it was the thing I

should do. So the things paintings: he never fall]

—had

He

did in Paris

I

—

the

things

first

the earlier, darker, smaller

a rather pointillist

[on the 1909 trip]

more

I

showed

[i.e..

[i.e.,

large

works of the

Impressionist] method. But later

got over that and later things done in Paris were

the kind of things

I

do

now.^*^

could see Impressionist paintings in the galleries and salons, and in the

Caillebotte collection at the

Luxembourg. Under

their influence, he not only

lightened his palette, but he also painted with shorter, strokes, as

is

more broken brush-

apparent in works of 1907 such as Tugboat at Boulevard Saint

Michel and Le Louvre et la Seine. That year, he produced light-hued paintings with pink, blues, lavenders and yellows predominant, such as Pont du Carrousel

The

and Gare d' Orleans, Apres-midi de Juin, and Pont du Carrousel in

latter suggests that

begun

in 1900,

some of which he probably saw

Hopper's mention of

of Albert Marquet,

man eral

at the

"pointillist influence"

not directly affected by the painting of such spite his later denial,

Durand-Ruel

was misleading,

artists as

sites that

series,

gallery.

for he

was

Seurat or Signac. De-

he seems, however, to have been interested in the work

who followed up his part in the autumn Salon with a one-

exhibition at the Galerie Druet in February 1907.

of the

the Fog.

he was familiar with Monet's Waterloo bridge

Hopper would

Marquet painted

sev-

depict in the next few months, including

Notre-Dame, Quai des Grands -Augustins, Quai du Louvre, and Pont Neuf,

Temps de

Pluie. After

Hopper switched

to a

more subdued

palette

and took

a

prosaic simplified approach to his subjects, the results resemble Marquet's ordinary, nondramatic views of Paris. Like Marquet, he also adopted a style of

Seductive Paris: i()o6- 1 goy

summarizing the human

67

/

figure with a quick brushstroke as can be seen in

Le

Pont des Arts of 1907.

Another

Hopper developed

interest that

hiter he admitted that he

had once bought

chitectural details, but he

good photographer can get

the

was photography. Years from

sees things

a different

was amazed "by how much personality

Atget,^^

artistes" that

a

He later avowed admiration for who was then active in Paris producing

into a picture.

Eugene

"documents pour

in Paris

camera and taken pictures of ar-

lamented "the camera

angle, not like the eye."^' Yet he

the photography of

a

"^^

he supplied to

artists

looking for subject

among them Dunoyer de Segonzac, Andre Derain, and Man Ray. Like Atget, Hopper created a mood of melancholy and tended to convey a

matter,

Both he and Atget depicted such subjects

feeling of solitude.

stairway, Left

Bank

streets,

as

an interior

and bridges along the Seine. Hopper even took

the boat to nearby Saint-Cloud,

where

his painting

suggests familiarity with the photographs Atget

of the staircase in the park

made

there.

Both

artists

em-

phasized the sloping terrain and the rhythmic angularity of the architectural forms.

The

however, chose to compress

painter,

this space

through the use of

a characteristically flattened perspective.

Hopper reveled in the Paris spring. He watched the children playing in Luxembourg Gardens and went to hear music in the garden of the Tuileries.^^ He enjoyed the students on parade in the Luxembourg Gardens every Friday afternoon when the French army band played and all sorts of the

colorful

bohemian types emerged

American gawker's he commented was

He went

delight.

a

young

to the Salon des Independants,

which

to join in the festivities.^^ It

not "particularly good."^^ If he noticed the

Marin and the ever-present Max Weber, artists

ranging from Henri Rousseau

as well as

to Vassily

was

works by John

European avant-garde

Kandinsky, he gave no

sign.

Perhaps he liked the three landscapes by Marquet. In late May, he reported: "I

often taking the boat to sions

St.

am

painting out-of-doors

the time now,

Cloud or Charenton."^^ These were the excur-

on which he produced Canal LocJ^

Saint Cloud;

all

at Charenton;

Gateway and Fence,

Le Pare de Saint-Cloud; and other scenes along the Seine. These all painted in a rather harsh midday light, stressing muted

three canvases are

greens and grays.

Hopper

recalled that Paris

liked the physical aspect of the city. the river, painting

all.

I

the streets, along

under the influence of Impressionism, painting every-

thing in a high key for nearly a year. fluence, after

was "the apex of everything.

worked by myself in

I

Other than

painted very dark."^^

It

to lighten tones for

The hooks were

neighborhood of the rue de

was probably not

set

a strong, lasting in-

me. Henri's students

deeper than he cared to admit.

Lille stayed

with him and became

The

a place

of

EDWARD HOPPER

/

Edward Hopper in

68

Paris, igoy.

imagination: "I could just go a few steps and I'd see the Louvre across the river.

From

Coeur.

It

the corner of the Rues de Bac and Lille, you could see Sacre-

hung

like a great vision in the air

the familiar corner tow^ard the broad,

above the

open

vistas

city."^^

His

feet

turned

along the Seine and his

imagination soared. Before Christmas, w^hen Edw^ard wrote his mother about his

away from home, plication

seems

to

the occasion

moved him

to a confidence

first

holiday

of which the im-

have escaped even her vigilant eye:

On Christmas evening

I

went

to a

which games were played and

went with

platter; etc.

I

bonne, and

we

dinner at an English chapel "after

a pleasant

a very bright

derived considerable

programme, which consisted

evening enjoyed" spin the

Welsh

girl, a

student at the Sor-

amusement from

the evening's

chiefly of sentimental songs with the

h's omitted.^'"

Enid Marion Saies was

Mme. Jammes. Her

a brilliant

young woman who

also

boarded with

family had lived in Wales, but were actually English,

not Welsh, a distinction

initially

lost

on Hopper. Enid was three years

Seductive Paris:

younger than

go6- 1 goy

I

he,

like

tall

69

/

him

(five feet eight inches), slender,

and

pretty,

with dark brown hair and bright brown eyes. She was charming, had a de-

speaking voice and an infectious laugh/'

lightful

then

and

introduced

She had

Edward

religion, but her

came

to

sent her to a

him about ies,

intellectual, she

was

her second year at the Sorbonne, where she studied French literature

in

history.

too,

An

Quaker

visiting

little,

When

Great Britain, Hopper,

when an

who was

family had

interviewer asked

then in his early eight-

met

girl there I'd

strict

for

she,

in Paris

and we went

not much."^'^

Edward many years after their meeting and asked he answered: "I remember going to Versailles with you

Enid wrote

if he

remembered

and

to the

Opera

her,

to

to see

Mme. Jammes

gotten

English

little

which explains how

religious,

school in England. ^'^) Once,

knew an

may have

French authors. Like him, she cared

to various

mother was intensely

board above Eglise Evangelique Baptiste. (Her

recalled: "I

around a

languages and loved literature; she

a gift for

'Manon,'

think

I

it

was."

He

added:

"I

have not for-

kitchen with Miss Cuniffe speaking fluent, but bad

French and drinking too much

tea

—

—

I

remember

two gangling boys and

the

mud all over Paris but a wonderful city just the same."^"* Hopper took Saies, whom he liked to tease, on a number of excursions to tourist attractions such as Versailles.

he

made

ies at

suit,

They enjoyed each

Sorbonne and was ticketed

who had

one M. Premier,

Hopper was marry

To

she recalled

for marriage.

already proposed.

London. Years

A Frenchman was in purAs summer approached,

later she told

"in love with her"; he even "followed her to

his

mother Edward wrote only

he had to ask for money: I

may

to

not for Madrid, Holland,

Museum. His

his family,

had

.

.

.

Italy,

in

later

memory

[It]

I

I

at 55

of the

Gower

city

Street, not far

was not

"London deserves

its

bad name

has a sort of squat dingy strength to

to the

gay sparkle of Paris.

He did

It is

like

not paint: he rejected the

—

muddy The banks

"very swift and very

those over the Seine. cept

if

might as well see all I am here When he left Paris on June 27, it was

Germany. In London, he found lodging

or

Bloomsbury,

city."^''^ it

and Germany, even

in

from the

favorable. Writing to

he extended the series of comparisons across cultures that Paris

instigated:

gloom.

London and wanted

propose expanding their original

"I feel that since

not have another chance. "^'^'

one of the cheap hotels British

her daughter that

her."^^

project with travel to Madrid, England, Holland, Italy,

can as

how much

her laugh. At the age of twenty-one, she had just finished her stud-

the

Saies returned to her family in

to

company and

other's

where the 'embankments'

New

as regards it,

that

is

weather and

quite in contrast

York, essentially a commercial

Thames

as a subject, saying

the bridges also are higher

he found

and larger then

are lined with factories and ware houses ex-

are."^^

EDWARD HOPPER

10

/

Enid Sales.

Setting out to visit finer

museums, he judged

examples than the Louvre, also going

especially admired, the British terior

that the National Gallery

to the

Museum, and

other galleries.

as "the peoples "I

playground.

have discovered a well.

it)."^"

He

found the

in-

of Westminster Abbey "very interesting" and "tremendously English,"

but the Francophile missed the charm of Parisian

and

had

Wallace Collection, which he

You

see

I

little

"'''^

Paris

still

loomed

streets,

w^hich he referred to

large, especially

French restaurant on Soho Street where

could not forget the French cooking (there

What had brought Edward

direcdy to

is

French food: I

eat cheaply

nothing like

London was Enid. He took her

"dinner at an Italian restaurant in Soho,"^' and they

sat

to

together in her family's

garden while she embroidered a waistcoat for her French suitor and intended husband. Edward was helping her by biting off the threads, she recalled,

when

he suddenly recoiled and said he wasn't "going to do that for another man."''^

He

know that he loved her and wanted to marry her, as she told her daughter. He had the examples of his friends in Paris, Bruce and Graecen, with their newborn sons. Nothing came of it. He waited in London only until let

money

her

arrived from his parents on July i8, leaving the next day for Amster-

dam, about nine days

earlier than originally planned.

Hopper spent only four or five days. He visited Amsterdam and Haarlem, where his favorite teacher, Robert Henri, was conducting a In Holland,

Seductive Pans:

I

()o6- 1 goy

I

Ji

summer school for American students, among them Josephine Nivison, EHzabeth Fisher, Hartman R. Harris, Clara Perry, Louise Pope, and Helen Niles. Every Sunday, Henri took Hals

Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum. Hopper saw Hals's paintings

in

town hall in Haarlem, but

seum

works by Rembrandt and

his students to look at

that impressed

past belief in

The

its

him

reality

—

was Rembrandt's Nightwatch

it

as "the it

most wonderful thing

in the

of his

almost amounts to deception.

I

in the

Rijksmu-

have seen,

it's

"^^

next stop was Berlin, where he arrived July 26 and stayed at Eich-

berg's Hotel

on Charlottenstrasse.

He commented

that the prosperity of the

countryside through which he had passed on the train from Holland re-

minded him of America: "Immense wheat fields, railroads and factories."^"* By the first of August, he was in Brussels, "a fine little city, but very much like everything is French, even the soldiers look so and as you know, Paris

—

French to

spoken almost altogether. The teutonic

is

He did

have been entirely extinguished."^^

and spent only two days

While

there,

in the

traits

not think

of the Flemish seem

much

of the

museum

Belgian capital, staying at the Monopole Hotel.

however, he seems to have had a good time, as he posed for a

photograph with two male friends.

Hopper days

later,

arrived back in Paris on

August

He

Madrid, but reconsidered and

sailed

illness.

home on

ther's health. Yet,

he also must have recognized that

America and begin

remained

—which

suggests that

to

make

his

mark

as

a

the Majestic from Cher-

sudden decision that was surely connected

21, a

this

to his father five

Hopper had planned

^^'

bourg on August

return to

wrote

hoping that he was "gaining strength daily"

Garret was suffering from a rather serious trip to

3.

was imperative

it

an

to his fa-

artist.

that he

How to go about

unclear. Abruptly he cut short the voyage of self-discovery that

had indelibly altered

his life

and

his art.

THE

mmm]

N:

1907-1910 EUROPE, WHICH HAD STRENGTHENED pelled

him

new heights of influence on his return, caused only confusion Edward Hopper's talent fell prey to conflicting claims, enticed by

to

in his pupil.

the

Robcrt Henri and pro-

newly discovered charms of Paris, yet beleaguered by the outcry back

in

New York for an American art. Among the strongest proponents of the value of native roots was Henri himself, whose

one of the original spurs

now

was, do as

I

say,

not as

own

successes in

Europe had been

Hopper's pilgrimage abroad. Henri's message

to

did.

I

To compound confusion, the economic outlook for a young artist in America in the autumn of 1907 was not auspicious. The previous spring the stock

market had plunged. Business

failures multiplied as the panic of 1907

revealed flaws in the currency and credit structure. Given the economic uncertainty,

known

no gallery or patron could be expected

painter.

arrived on the for the ideal to a

The

alternative

New York

of the free

was only too familiar

scene by

artist.

Now

way of commercial

if tardy,

desire for

art,

to scorn.

independence from

rather than

Hopper.

return to his parents

and

He had

only to outgrow

At

stake, too,

to live

sister in

it

world seemed

his family.

France and the Baptist mission. Hopper was determined

New York City,

to

chance on an un-

his very survival in the art

depend on the commercial work he had come growing,

to take a

was

Back from

on

his

own in From

Nyack.'

/

72

The Arrjifivu lent American: I goy- 1 gio and uncertainties of

the pressures

He

past.

wrote

thanking him

to his Paris

ment ahout her

Edward

We

New

York,

companion Enid

for his "lengthy

and interesting

mind Hed

his

Saies,

who

to the happier

rephed from

Enghmd

and confiding her de-

letter"

fiance, she reminisced fondly

ahout the confidences shared

in Paris:

decided, the day you said goodbye, do you remember, that

should like Monsieur Premier. days

1

months

8

suppose

ago.

made

I've

He

is

I

was quite

I,

hash pretty generally of

a

&

wiser

—

"gay student

well,

I

suppose

life" in Paris.

I'm telling you

all

I

& had

lived

with him for 6 & seems more. ... I

my

but I'm not

life,

good time during

a

But Oh! I'm miserable.

this. But you are the only one to

I

don't

whom

pretend that I'm gliding through a period of engaged

were good pals, weren't we?

If

I

I

in love

lo years older than

going back now, & perhaps for a "child of impulse & of passion" safer

7i

impending marriage. Expressing deep disappoint-

pression in the face of her

with

I

it's

my

know why I

need not

bliss

—& we

like to think that.^

Enid hoped that Edward would come

well enough. Years later his friend

to the rescue, she did not

Guy Pene du

Bois

know him

would remark

that

Hopper preferred "able dissection of the human species" to romance. Enid's letter did not stir Edward to action and her ensuing story was far from tragic. She eluded her monsieur, and in 1909 married a Swede named Nils Buhre,

moved to Malmo, and had four children. Her 1907 confidence elicited no response. Only in 1948 did Enid renew the correspondence, when she read of Hopper in Time: "I wonder if you can remember the very unsophisticated English girl you used to make fun of & take for excursions to Versailles etc.," she wrote. "You used to make me laugh a her

lot."^

letter,

so

I

many

for

monograph on

remember you Enid years.

from her that he not only answered his

him, response suggests Saies. ... It

his

Bryan.

special she

was good

to hear

warm

had been: "Of

from you

one personal link with Europe, Hopper faced

York. Simply to keep himself in the

found doing

work. The exceptionally

how

after

"^

Having broken

New

so pleased to hear

but sent her a

and lengthy, course

He was

illustrations

They were

to

city,

life in

he looked for work, which he

by the piece for an advertising agency, Sherman and

prove a mainstay for longer than he could hope or

For the agency in 1908 he designed the next season's ads for Brigham

fear.

Hop-

kins straw hats: modishly he aped the silhouettes and curvilinear forms of

contemporary Art Nouveau. Neither personally his

output makes no secret of the

distinctive nor innovative,

fact that his heart

had other designs.

EDWARD HOPPER In the midst of nostalgia

and

Hopper

financial necessity,

New

catching up with old friends from the sence, they

74

/

had been busy seeking avenues

York School of

lost

no time

Art. In his ab-

work, inspired by

for their

their

teacher Henri, out to circumvent not merely the general hard times but the

dominance of the conservative National Academy of Design. The ringleadArnold Friedman, Julius Golz, Jr., and Glenn Coleman, assembled a show of fifteen artists. Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Contemporary American Artists. They rented the top floor of a former club building at 43-45 West Forty-second Street from March 9 through 31, 1908. Besides the organizers, two of Hopper's friends gave a special hand: George Bellows worked to improve the decoration of the hall and Guy du ers,

Bois gave early proof of the gift for publicity and social connections that he

would use

unselfishly

and assiduously

lending "support to our faltering

Bois's

Hopper. Friedman recalled du

to aid

spirits

by interesting the newspaper-

men and other Bigwigs."^ As for Hopper, Friedman spoke of him only as "rereturned

cently

from Paris" and

participation.^ Since

work began on

"enthusiastic,"

but noted

this exhibition in the late

no

active

winter of 1906,

right after Hopper's departure for Europe, his inclusion after his return in the

amount of effective networking and suggests that his peers continued to hold him in esteem, as they had in school. The participants came from the circle of Henri's male students and com-

autumn of 1907

prised

some of

indicates a certain

the

most promising

artists

Friedman, Golz, Coleman, Bellows, du

of the next generation: besides

and Hopper, there were Rock-

Bois,

well Kent, Carl Sprinchorn, and seven more.^

As

a gesture against the

predominance of academic

art,

the

show by

stu-

dents of Henri took inspiration from the master himself. Henri had recently

achieved a controversial success against academic

"The

art:

— and Maurice Prendergast— which opened

Eight," as they

became known

the famous

show of

besides himself, they were John Sloan,

George Luks, Ernest Lawson, Everett Shinn, William Glackens, Arthur Davies,

450 Fifth Avenue,

and

notoriety,

on February

3, 1908.

The

at the

B.

Macbeth Gallery,

success of Henri, in both sales

was not duplicated by the younger group. The headline

in the

Evening Mail proclaimed "The Eight Out-Eighted." The reviewer meant no

compliment: "Having had 'The Eight', we quences."

He

singled out Bellows as "a

cated that most of these "youths,"

Henri, "belong to a future that

On March and

full

13,

is

now

have their direful conse-

coming man

all

right," but pontifi-

whose work he found too derivative of

never going to happen

at all."^

Sloan and Henri came to see the show:

"Good

lot

of stuff

of interest," Sloan remarked. "I'd like to be rich enough to buy some

of these things by Golz, Dresser, Keefe,

etc.

They would be

fine to

own,

so

The Ambivalent American: i goy- igio different

made

from the 'regular picture

a particular

mark, and

gave no evidence of

it

if

75

I

game'."'^

The

artists

he singled out never

he recognized any special talent in Hopper, he

at the time.

More than

decade would pass before

a

Sloan came to think highly of Hopper. As for Henri, Hopper recalled that his

my

old teacher "didn't like

Paris paintings.

say that the only excuse for a light painting

Hopper contributed

They were was

to

He

too light.

hang on

used to

a light wall."'"

three canvases done in Paris, using English

titles

The Louvre and Seine, The Bridge of the Arts, and The Parl^at St. Cloud. All employed a light palette and a freedom of brushstroke inspired by his encounter

with Impressionism.

He

showed,

too,

one of

his Paris caricatures in water-

Une Demi-mondaine. Besides Hopper, three of the fifteen artists ventured to exhibit French subjects in a show billed as "American": du Bois's

color,

Paris painting Gaite Montparnasse shared

Shinn had exhibited

a

month

earlier

and Harry Daugherty showed

portraits

employing the dark

Ignoring

this

subject with a painting that

with "The Eight." G. Leroy Williams

illustrations

The other artists mainly showed

its

from Flaubert's Madame Bovary.

New York and New York School of Art. the New York^ American trum-

scenes painted in and around

palette favored at the

marginal French contingent,

peted that the exhibition represented "one step nearer to a national

art."''

Hop-

per was not in step. His entries betrayed his allegiance to Paris in both content

and

style.

he was

When the show opened, seven months after his return from Europe,

still

dition of

full

of the experience of France and the late-nineteenth-century

French

art,

home and enough For the Steamer,

rest

The El

tra-

even though he desperately wanted to find acceptance

at

support to enable him to pursue a career as a painter.

of 1908 Hopper's paintings avoided French subjects: Tramp Station (based

on

his

memory

of the Ninth Avenue El at

Christopher Street), Railroad Train, and Tugboat with Blac/{

Smol{estacI{.

He

seemed to be following Henri's reiterated calls for "progress in our national art"

and "an appreciation of the great ideas native

to the

country and then the

achievement of a masterly freedom in expressing them."' In derived Tramp Steamer from his

memory

reality.

Hopper

of a British ship observed in the

English Channel. All the pictures share the theme of transportation and suggest preoccupation with getting away.

lustrating

Money

and

frugality

would

let

him

Hopper was biding his time until ilsave up enough to go back to Paris.

not spent in convivial evenings of drink and talk with other artists

could speed his departure.

He was more

keen on getting back

to

something

indefinable than on being one of the boys. Then, too, there was the

Henri,

who

still

took his

model of

summers abroad.

For the second journey, the

initiative

came from Edward. This time

there was no careful advance planning by Elizabeth Hopper, laying the

EDWARD HOPPER

groundwork

76

/

to

home away from home. Everyone

provide her son a

in the

family seems to have taken for granted that one could simply reappear on the

doorstep at 48 rue de Lille and pick up where things had

left

off nearly

two

On March 17, 1909, the R.M.S. Majestic arrived in Plymouth Edward Hopper. Via train from Cherbourg he proceeded directly on

years before.

bearing

He presented

to Paris.

himself in the rue de

he was forced to seek "an hotel

were not

as expected:

(Hotel

Malo)," he reported to his mother on

St.

Jammes

has been

and

ill

mained

set

bed for

in

torium on the outskirts of

had looked near the

university,

"'^

—

Suddenly having

he

where lodgings would be cheap. His heart

re-

on the rooms above the Baptist mission. By April

in his

to reinstall

Madame Jammes was

Courbevoie, a Parisian suburb, and looking consumption.'^

Hopper wrote

when he

2,

himself there. Familiarity was up-

mind; he had no thought of any possible

April 16 he reported that

quarter

in the latin

March 24, because "Madame some months today she left for a sanato fend for himself,

Paris.

wrote again, he had been able

permost

only to discover that things

Lille,

better;'^

risk of infection.

still

at the hospital

on April

On in

28, she died of

the next day, saying that he thought

Madame

but he was not certain. His

comment

would be buried sometime the day

after,

made years later to Enid Saies clarifies his concern for their old landlady: "Mme. Jammes was ill then and died while I was there. I went to her burial at Courbevoie."'^

To

his family in

Nyack, Hopper showed

little

emotion

at the

death of the

woman who had so mothered him and sheltered both him and Enid. He had to know her sons, too, yet his only expressed feeling was concern re-

come

garding the apartment: would the sons keep

room near here first

for

as

I

like this part

of May, although

some

it is

of the

city.

I

itP

am

If not, "I shall try to get a

hoping

to see

some

riots the

hardly possible as there has been no serious trouble

time."'^

The Jammes boys decided to keep the rooms above the mission until OcHopper could feel secure in his familiar base. He warmed up to the sur-

tober.

roundings, repeatedly praised "the splendid weather," wrote his father, "The

boulevards and parks are looking

fine,

Taking advantage of the season and

and the men are wearing straw his

proximity to the Seine and the

Louvre, he painted out-of-doors along the river almost every day. line

of least resistance. As a result his paintings differ

those of the previous trip:

Pont Royal. His

style

cally the contrast

dued

Le Pavilion de

hats."'^

little in

It

was the

theme from

Flore of the Louvre and, hard by,

did evolve to a degree: he utilized

much more

Le

dramati-

of light and shadow; he modified his palette into more sub-

tones, without the high-key pastels of his earlier canvases. Gradually he

freed himself from the impact of the Impressionists: his brushstrokes were no

longer as choppy.

The Ambivalent American: igoy-i^io Socially his

mother

Hopper was

rather busy during this second stay in Paris.

had run

that he

77

/

whom

into several "fellows"

He

told

knew from New

he

York, probably classmates such as Patrick Henry Bruce, Oliver N. Chaffee, or

Walter Pach,

living in Paris.'*^

still

he reported, "All Paris

is

decorated in

Rome

has recently been canonized in

d' Arc as she

honor of Jeanne

And

—

it

looks

Some occasion brought him to lunch at the home of a French famwhich he found awkward, given his inability to speak much French.^* Late in May, the "splendid weather" began to change. Years later Hop-

very fine."^^ ily,

per chose to forget the sunny spring and dwell on the negative.

Guy du

Bois,

who

could appreciate the point:

get used to Paris weather.

The low

"It

is

He

wrote to

hard for an American

clouds and the rain. 'Showers are

to

still

when I was there in summer. I work at his ease in the neighborturn to excursions. To his mother

probable' used to be the daily weather report

never got used

to

it."^^

hood of the rue de

No

Lille,

he reported again: "I

am

longer able to

he was forced to far

from

feeble.

I

went

to

Fontainebleau yesterday

with a friend of mine and had a very good time although then.

The Gorge de Franchard

itself."^^

in the forest

is

Elizabeth herself had been feeble, but

made

rained

it

very fine as

is

now and

also the forest

a recovery, as

Edward's

next letter shows:

Dear Mother, I

—

am glad to hear you are growing stout I had guessed as much you know it is comparatively easy to detect

from your handwriting

—

the writing of a fat lady.

hundred. In so

much

spite

I

hope however that you won't

rise

over two

of that you should be thankful that you are feeling

better.^^

His bent for caricature did not stop at his father and himself. After he announces a further excursion:

this sally,

am going to try to go to Chartres in a few

"I

days to see the cathedral supposed to be one of the finest in France."

Work

I

interrupted by weather,

Hopper began taking

stock and

making

he explained to his mother:

plans, as

suppose you want a I

letter

from

me

have been thinking of going

month,

as

I

want very much

not having had one

down

to

Madrid

to see the gallery there,

through Paris to England & Holland.

Of course

I

lately.

for about a

and return

should like to see

& Germany, but don't believe I will be able to, even as it is I may have to ask you for money in a month or two. You know of course Italy

that

I

do not want

well see

all

I

can as

to I

do

so,

may

but

I

feel that since

I

am

here

I

not have another chance. Should

might I

as

remain

EDWARD HOPPER in Paris I

/

would have ample enough

I

don't think

to last

me

until

^8

December, but

shall stay that long.

I

took your cousins to hear the music in the Tuileries a few

I

nights ago, and they seemed to enjoy agreeable, though

have met

I

very much.

however she has been very

closer acquaintance,

times

it

I

find

them very

suspect Helen might prove to be otherwise on a

I

nice to

me

the few

her. I

hope you are well and thriving.

Your son E. Hopper^^

New

Velazquez, Goya, and Manet had been favorites of his teachers

at the

York School. The

He had round; now

lesson

remained and prompted the

ideal itinerary.

glimpsed Germany, England, the Netherlands on the previous he would see the Prado, and he was well aware that

He

His mother's cousins had proved a diversion. ble,

aware of what

Money was days

to

do and where, interested

a delicate subject, the province

was the

Italy

classic tour.

sounds surprisingly socia-

in music, sensitive to nuance.

of his mother. With his father two

he took a different tack:

later,

G. H. Hopper.

Dear

Sir:

We are still having fine weather here and also many English and Americans although not

as

many Americans

as usual. It

is

said also

that they are not casting their coin about as freely as in former times,

and

that

A

many

shops are feeling the effects of it.

few nights ago

I

went

the Burns-Johnson fight

—

it

to see the pictures

looked as

(cinematograph) of

Burns didn't even have

if

a

"look in" from the start although he seemed as good a boxer but not so big or powerful.

On Monday on the Seine near surrounding

He

probably lacked "the punch."

of this week Paris.

Paris, as

I

There

it is

went is

to St.

Germain en Laye

a very fine

up on quite

a

a

town

view here of the country

hill.

A

high "Terrace" ex-

tends for a mile and a half along the river at a height of two or three

flanked by an absolutely straight line of enormous

hundred

feet,

trees. It's

very imposing. In the town there

which has

a

moat and contains the usual

is

also

an old Chateau

collection of antiques

or less interesting.

Give

my

regards to your wife and child.

Yours respectfully E. Hopper''

more

The Ambivalent American: I goj- 1 gio Jack Johnson had defeated the Canadian

The American

knockout, prompting

hope"

humhle

to

assumes that

a

racial tensions as

Negro and

Tommy

promoters searched for

new champion. Hopper

the

view of victory by

79

I

leaves

Burns

a "great

in a

white

unspoken the dominant

delivers a practiced estimate of the bout.

and follow

his father will be interested

He

which he ex-

his points,

presses in boxing jargon vividly set off by quotation marks, as if to say, this

not our language but the

way

Hopper

Boxing had been

punching bag

interest since the days of the

bonds.

they put

it.

in the attic,

one of their few male

had to explain to his father that by "the pictures," he meant

the cinema, a form of mass entertainment that spectable back

Nyack

in

Without missing

for those of the

a beat,

was not

yet considered re-

Hoppers' background and

Hopper switches

he gives a practiced estimate, this time

from

to

station.^^

one of his excursions. Again

a painter's point of view. In clear

language he sketches the layout and principal features of the place,

memory

to consolidate the

for himself as to

In the end the weather, rain "that

don," as

much

as

I

communicate

it

to

as

do not believe could be beaten

any lack of funds, put off further projects

much

someone

else.

Lon-

in

to paint or travel.

Hopper embarked July 31 on xheRyndam of the Holland-American riving in Hoboken August 9."^

Line, ar-

Vivid reminders of his roots awaited his return. Plans were under

Hudson-Fulton Celebration,

for the

is

mutual

a topic of

300 years since Henry

Hudson

sailed

jointly

up

commemorating

way

the passage of

the river and 102 years since Robert

Fulton's similar voyage by steamboat. Hopper's classmate Clarence K. Chatterton

had been commissioned

promoting

his

to design a

booklet and several posters

hometown of Newburgh. Hopper,

too,

produced

a black-

and-white poster design for the event (whether on commission or not clear).

Nyack held

its

own

parade with

floats that

landed

at the

Main

is

un-

Street

dock, where they were joined by local groups, including the Baptist Boys'

Brigade and neighboring

mounted

New

a

Hudson-Fulton

companies.^^

fire

exhibition,

The

Museum

Metropolitan

which focused on the Dutch

York and featured seventeenth-century Dutch

artists,

settlers

of

Rem-

notably

brandt, Hals, and Vermeer.^^

Ancestry was

made

the

all

very well, but even before his second trip

move from Nyack

and going back. Again returned to

Sherman

to

his only

New York. He had way

to

Hopper had

no intention of giving up

independence was

illustrating,

time, he threw himself into his painting with

France and

his

own renewed

In spite of the rain, the five

ment and planted

visions.

He

feel for his

months

set

in

same

his new new mem-

renewed ambition. In

canvases, he staked out fresh territory as he grappled with old and ories of

and he

and Bryan for advertising commissions. At the

American

roots.

France had reinforced

about painting from

memory

his attach-

the landscape

EDWARD HOPPER

/

he had sketched so precisely

80

His words had cap-

in the letter to his father/'

The

tured the view in language his father would understand.

"Terrace" in

France recalled the Palisades along the Hudson south of Nyack. Thinking back and beginning to paint Valley of the Seine, he uses a visual language that mingles memory of the place in France with recollection of other painters' visions.

He

had grown up with the

Hudson

the landscapes of the

Thomas

The Oxbow, had come

Cole's

Advertising

painting," the

museum

Room.^^ For Hopper Seine. In the

that

December

became

it

distance.

set close

on the

and out

to the

as interpreted in

Museum in

foil as

in the Accessions

he shaped Valley of the

a vast space, with the river

his eye

on

a highly detailed tree

the sinuous river.

Hopper

instead places him-

back from the picture plane and "up on quite a

from the

carries the eye across

left

and

viaduct for the railroad that curves

dim

in 1908.

pure landscape

the foreground of the picture, before sweeping across

left in

ture toward the

it

Oxbow

featured The

matrix and a

a

But Cole boldly fixed

panorama and

self at a distance

to see

masterpiece of the school,

Metropolitan

to the

manner of Cole, Hopper commands

winding in the

a traditional

A

"one of the most important productions

as

it

and learned

river

River School.

city.

The

out, but by

down

hill."

He,

too,

means of a gleaming white

the center of the valley and the pic-

arches and the city at the limits of sight suggest

French image of Italian landscape, stretching past some

dilapi-

dated and weedy aqueduct toward Rome. In complexity and scope Valley of the Seine represents a

Also

and

in 1909,

vastness,

new

departure for Hopper.

Hopper painted Le Bistro,

dark and

light in Paris:

foot of dark facades, a couple a bottle, while the eye

bend above

sits at

a

moves out and

a

dramatic evocation of intimacy

on the edge of shadow round

table,

center,

back

to the left, at the

immobile, with glasses and to

imaginary cypresses that

a preternaturally white bridge with arches stretching to the right.

Hopper remembers ness of a scene that

a possible intimacy is

on the margin,

monumental and

picturesque.

set against the bright-

He had

absorbed the

spring sunlight, but never saw such trees in walking out from the rue de In a third canvas of this period, tainly not

Hopper

shifts to

Lille.

imagine something cer-

drawn from spring mornings along the Seine. He creates a vignette Summer Interior. Again the eye moves

of erotic tension and loneliness indoors:

diagonally from the foreground across and back, taking in a

down

next to an

less blouse,

unmade bed on

woman

her head cast down, her right elbow supporting her body against

the bed, her

left

arm drooping

limp, the hand invisible between her thighs,

her bare leg touching a carpet of light from an unseen window. partial nudity, facelessness,

uality

flung

a trailing bedsheet: dressed only in a sleeve-

abandoned posture, and

visually

imply the disconsolate aftermath of an encounter

Formally the composition, with abrupt diagonals and

The

figure's

emphasized

in the

a tilted

sex-

demimonde.

green

floor, as

The Ambivalent American: igoj-igio

I

8i

Hopper had heen looking at Degas. further way in which the second Parisian

well as the intimate theme, suggests that

The trip

intensity of feeling reveals a

renewed and deepened Hopper's experience and

puritan values. All his

life,

he preferred to paint "from the

from memory or from posed models. But here,

with

his inner conflict fact,"

as in the other

whether

two canvases

The reComing after

of this autumn of 1909, he paints in a way without precedent for him. turn to Paris had provoked, not placated, his erotic sensibility.

and out of

his experience there,

Summer

toward works of

Interior looks

his

maturity: the loneliness of recurrent tense interiors, the sexual undercurrent,

and the perspective of the voyeur.

Summer

Besides Degas, the composition of

Hopper's growing interest

in

Interior also

contemporary French

shows signs of

illustration.

He

brought

back three issues o^ Les Maitres Humoristes, illustrated by Albert Guillaume

and Jean-Louis Forain,

as well as a

copy of L^ Sourire, a

From Guillaume, Hopper adapted an

illustration of a

on an embankment, using similar architecture, curb

humor magazine.

French couple seated

and grassy

slope,

but exaggerating the drinking of wine, including three empty bottles.

Hop-

per changed the

humor, more

Not

mood

in line

as well, conveying

stones,

melancholy rather than ironic

with Anglo-Saxon puritanism than Latin freedom.

network afford Hopper another

until early 1910 did the old school

opportunity to show. Unlike two years before, he

now appeared

not only with

Henri's legions but with the leader himself. Henri and Sloan were chief organizers of the "Exhibition of Independent Artists,"

from April

i

through 27

in galleries

among the

which took place

improvised in a vacant commercial

The dates overlapped with the anAcademy of Design and called its authority into question. Each artist could enter one work for ten dollars, two for eighteen. Frugal as ever. Hopper spent for only one, Le Louvre et la Seine. No warehouse on West Thirty-fifth

Street.

nual spring exhibition at the National

doubt the

fee

was

a factor,

and possibly

also his dissatisfaction with the results

of his recent experiments, or sensitivity about his French themes in the face of Henri's American bent. Hopper did not

among

the 344 entries, although the

tireless

Guy du

Eager

to

sell

and no

critic

singled

show commanded many

Bois both took part and reviewed for the

emphasize the public impact of the

initiative,

him out

reviews.

The

New Yorl{ American.

he reported that more

than two thousand people showed up for opening night, so that the "promoters find

it

necessary to adopt police regulations for handling crowd*

Once again on

the margins, outside the fanfare.

French aesthetic and lived by commercial to

fit in.

He produced

illustrations.

Hopper nursed

He did

1910.

As

not

his

know how

advertisements for the "Wearing Apparel, Textile and

Fashion Show," a national trade exhibition that took place

March

"3^

in

Chicago

in

the symbol for the show, he designed an Atlas-like figure

EDWARD HOPPER

/

82

stooped under the weight of the show's name. Atlas provides an apt metaphor for

Hopper's

own

sense of the burden he

tinued to scrimp and

summer

dream of

loomed

before,

escape.

obligatory work.

felt in his

The

mind, though even

in his

He

con-

ideal itinerary, rained out the

than the year before

less

made a careful plan to carry it out. Ever present was the enthusiasm of Henri, who spent the summers of 1906, 1908, and 1910 in does he seem to have

Spain and painted the

common

people and especially their heroes, the fight-

ers of bulls.^'*

Hopper's move does not have the

summer expedition. As soon as he had saved the minimum, he embarked. On May 11, 1910, he arrived in Plymouth aboard the R.M.S. Adriatic, and made a beeline for Paris. For the first time he knew he was on his own, and could not expect to find the homelike setting securely linked with Nyack. The experience of the previous air

of a regular

him to look in the Latin Quarter for lodgings he could afford. name that reflected the place: Hotel des Ecoles, 15 rue Delambre. He looked up the Jammes boys, and the younger informed him that the elder had entered the army and was stationed near what Hopper translated as "the German frontier." That was all he bothered to relate to his mother. Years later, he filled in more for Enid Saies: "I have often wondered if the sons [of Mme. Jammes] survived the first World War. Casimir was year had taught

He

settled

doing

on

a

his service in the cavalry the last

he did not want to be

—he was

I

heard of him and that

afraid of horses

just

where

—and he must have had

plenty

is

ofthem."'^

Toward year's in

May

Paris

the end of his stay the year before,

worth of work

still

to be

done

Hopper had written of a

1910 he tarried in Paris only a

week

or

so.

He

on the 26th of May and spent 28 hours on the

staying at a very

good pension

ambitious

in Paris, besides

in the centre

of the

through the Pyrenees and the north of Spain

is

To

told his mother: "I left

train to

city.

The

trip

on the

is

quite

with exception of the means for transportation.

The trams

and ox and mule

carts

drawing

alert to landscape,

he reported that "the country roundabout the

fine

—

there

a big

is

west of which

I

seem

to be the thing for

—

train

have

I

"^^

he described Madrid: "Not very large but

his father

Madrid and am

very remarkable

never seen such wonderful clear views and sunshine.

modern

are very slow

Ever

freight."^' city

is

I

his sister

went

have forgotten the name

—they look good without

he reserved his longest and most vivid

Sunday and found

to a bull fight last

thought

it

would

very

range of snow-capped mountains toward the north-

name, however."^^ For

half

travel. In fact

be.

The

it

letter:

much worse

killing of the horses by the bull

is

than

I

very hor-

the

The Ambivalent American: I goj- 1 gio

much more

rible,

up

so as they have

to the bull to be butchered.

sport,

no chance not

It is

to escape

what

I

would

8^

and are ridden call

an exciting

merely brutal and horrible sickening.

The surprise I

/

entry of the bull into the ring however

and the very

Toledo

to

and wandered about under

came back

very beautiful, his

charges he makes are very pretty.

first

have also been out

is

—

a

,

a very hot

most wonderful old town,

sun for

a

day

after

which

I

to Madrid.^*^

The bull's entry was the only part that later, perhaps in deference to both Goya and Manet, he made the subject of an etching. Nothing else from his trip to Spain made its way into his art. He would not ape Henri. His eye and heart were already engaged.

For Spain,

after

all,

eleven days sufficed. Originally he had justified ven-

turing Spain by invoking the Prado to his mother the gallery there"^*'

—but no museums

—

"I

want very much

figure in the extant letters.

to see

By June

lo

he was back in Paris. Before leaving he had booked a hotel inhabited by Miss Cuniffe, his fellow former resident with

on July

scarcely three weeks:

the Cincinnati of the

i

he sailed from Cherbourg for

Hamburg- American

ocean had been the shortest, ceived and least lucky.

line.

The

than two months

less

Not even

Mme. Jammes. He remained

the truncated

all told,

new

New

York on

third venture across the

the least well con-

itinerary

had broken new

ground. Whatever Hopper had hoped to recapture or acquire did not materialize.

He would

no need

feel

to

pursue the

rest

of his ideal tour.

He had

exorcised the lure of European success, the treacherous example of Henri

and he never

tried

If the literal

Europe again.

yearning had been quenched, the original impact endured.

Hopper wrote in the space labeled "where "New York City and in Europe."^' On he sounded more ambivalent: "The life over there is entirely

More than two decades

later.

studied" on an exhibition entry form:

another occasion different

from the

life

here. In

Europe

And, with the exception of Spain, the seemed awfully

ordered; here

light there

is

different.

it is

disordered.

Those countries

we have here."^"^ In the end he admitcrude and raw here when I got back. It took me ten

don't have the clear skies and sunlight ted: "It

life is

years to get over Europe.'"*^

SEARCH OF \ STYLE: 1911-191S

IN

SUDDENLY HOME AGAIN solved nothing.

ken, the

He

ever.

spell.

At most

in the

At twenty-eight,

French themes and

settle

down

in his

were a

new

as acute as

attraction

of the expatriate Whistler, and yet aware of the challenge

launched by the apostles of truly American

galleries

of 1910, Hopper had re-

Europe had tarnished, not bro-

his reasons for inner conflict

vacillated, feeling nostalgia for

to the style

summcr

his hasty third trip to

to a distinctive style

Unable

to sort himself out

and

of his own, he could hardly hope to persuade

and buyers. Nor was he any

emotional

art.

closer to decisiveness

and

settling

down

life.

He took a practical initiative, finding a studio at 53 East Fifty-ninth Street, not far from the brownstone of Robert Henri. Here he would at least have

more than free of the

the inadequate space he

annoyance of being accosted by the streetwalkers

there. In the absence of

dependence continued

any outlet for

to press.

a

low

point.

may have been would top

1,

he

"Salesman" would

and the burden upon the

his paintings, the

Street,

and be

who swarmed

need for financial

in-

Momentarily he despaired of his dream.

In the city directory for 191

was

had suffered on Fourteenth

listed his profession as "salesman."' It

satirize the function

of commercial art

drum up business by selling his skill. It made at his own expense; quite in character, it

artist to

a bitter joke

the long line of caricatures of himself

Hopper was reduced again

In Search of a Style: igi i-igi§ to

/

canvassing offices and peddling his

under your arm,

portfolio

"You had

skill.

meaning," recalled James Ormsbee Chapin, another

Hopper himself spoke frankly of his times

walk around the block

\\\

money and

the job for

He

lousy thing. "^

I

was forced

into

it

Besides the advertising agencies,

tried to force

1,

to hell

an effort to

in

myself to have some interest

all.

real."^

the end of 191

artist

couple of times before

That's

I

and

illustrator."^

go

I'd

in,

"Some-

wanting

wouldn't get the

I

in

make some money. But

it.

it

wasn't very

Hopper sought out magazines. By

he was illustrating for Everybody's, a magazine active

in the

muckraking movement, then edited by Trumbull White. Hopper's work, of

in black

it

young

and white, consisted

at first

all

of line drawings for stories about

boys.

The

business of earning

from

vive

a

never tired of reiterating his antipathy: "Illustration didn't

me.

really interest

a

with

was hard and de-

It

reluctance and embarrassment:

same time hoping

at the

to sell yourself,

Edward Hopper.

just like