Featured Artist

Edward Hopper was born in Nyack in New York State in 1882. He was to spend the majority of his life in New York City, holding a studio on the top floor of 3 Washington Square North for over fifty years. He studied at the New York School of Art (The Chase School) as well as a brief stint in Paris. Besides exhibiting and selling a picture at the Armory Show in 1913, he spent the next ten years working exclusively as a commercial illustrator. 

Hopper's reputation is marked by his profound vision of American life. In the words of art critic Robert Hughes, "Edward Hopper was the quintessential realist painter of 20th century America. His images have become part of the very grain and texture of American experience.

Rarely developing narratives in his work, he was primarily concerned with the struggle between man and his surroundings. In his highly formal compositions, Hopper was able to convey a character's complex inner life in direct correlation to his environment, often achieving a great sense of poignancy. 

Hopper is known as an American Scene painter. He takes pleasure in the commonplace, depicting such everyday scenes as motel rooms, filling stations, street scenes and cafeterias, this last example being defined by possibly his best known work, 'Nighthawks' (1942). He was preoccupied with the effect of light and shadow and the moods they evoked at different times of the day, making him in every sense an American Impressionist. As his career progressed, however, Hopper became fascinated with the confrontation between Nature and Civilization, most noticeably in paintings such as 'Gas' (1940), where the tension is expressed through both color contrasts and precise composition. 

Hopper's early work was clearly influenced by Impressionism in the European tradition, particularly characterized by his female nudes, the study of which continued throughout his career. Achieving considerable success from the Twenties onwards, he nevertheless lived a quiet and stable life with his wife Josephine. He died in 1967, in his studio near Washington Square, in New York City.