Edward Hopper (1882-1967)

Edward Hopper. (Around the 1940s/50s). Everett/Shutterstock.

The American painter, Edward Hopper, was born in Nyack, New York, in July of 1882. After his primary education, Hopper began his art profession by attending the New York School of Art to pursue painting, which started his journey as an artist that formulated into a career until the mid-1960s. Through experimentation, travel, and art mediums, Hopper was most known for oil paintings that replicated an emotion of isolation, loneliness, and stillness through architectural images of New York and the New England Coast of Maine.

Throughout the early 20th century, Hopper was an illustrator for New York magazines and traveled throughout Europe, where he fell in love with the Parisian setting. Paris, France, became a highlight of many of Hopper’s earlier works and was quickly changed the following decade when the painter began to focus on New York City. During the art shift, it was in the 1930s that Hopper started to break away from illustrations to focus on a newer medium of etchings, which grew in popularity through various art salons and exhibitions in the United States. Before the 1930s, Hopper married his wife, Josephine Nivison, while pursuing his passion for art. From the earnings of Hopper’s illustrations and etchings, the artist and his wife moved into a studio in New York, where they remained for their lives.

In the studio, the artist never stopped painting and began gaining recognition for his oil work in the 1930s and 1940s, when he made many of his most known pieces, such as Early Sunday Morning (1930), Office at Night (1940), and Nighthawks (1942). In the 1940s, Hopper’s career took off tremendously, in contrast to his bleak years in the 1920s, struggling to find a path in Realism and Impressionism. By adapting to modern art styles, Museums across the nation took notice of Hopper’s new style and acquired his paintings. Edward Hopper earned prizes for his articulation of the bleak emotions of New York and the loneliness that derived from “the city that never sleeps.”

From Hopper’s focus on architecture, both of European and New England influence, critiques and museums continued to notice his work by his surprise, as many artists did not receive the appreciation in their active years of creating art. Despite his success, Hopper remained critical of his paintings and illustrations until his passing in May 1967. Today, Edward Hopper remains an American modern art icon in history. Hopper’s paintings come to life more today than ever as the nation continues to heal from the lonely and stark years of the global pandemic in 2020. Hopper’s art was artistically, technically, and emotionally ahead of its time, building a culture of American artists with the same dreams and passions he once had.