Edward Hopper

Nyack was a yacht-building town on the Hudson, and the boy carved model sailboats and barges and meant to be a naval architect. His father sold dry goods and retired at 49 on the strength of his wife's inheritance. The house was a strict Baptist one run by women — mother, grandmother, sister, maid — and his father's temper was mild. He signed and dated his drawings from the age of 10. He read Emerson over and over. From 1899 he spent six years at the New York School of Art, learning oil painting from William Merritt Chase and taking Robert Henri's life class, where the instruction was that the subject does not count, only what you feel about it.

In 1905 he took a part-time job designing covers for trade magazines, came to detest illustration, and stayed in it for economic reasons for 20 years. Three trips to Paris left him untouched by everything happening there — he later said he did not remember hearing of Picasso at all. At the 1913 Armory Show he sold Sailing for 250 dollars, painted over an earlier self-portrait. He was 31, and nothing followed it. Some 70 etchings between 1915 and 1923 brought the first notice and two prizes. The Brooklyn Museum bought a watercolor for 100 dollars, he sold out a show in 1924, and Two on the Aisle went for 1,500 dollars in 1927, which bought a car and the New England field trips. In 1931 the museums paid thousands and he sold 30 pictures.

He married Josephine Nivison on July 9, 1924. She had studied under Henri too, and it was her doing that six of his Gloucester watercolors got into the Brooklyn Museum show that started him. After that she modeled for nearly every figure he painted, kept his logbooks, managed his interviews and his career, and stopped being a painter in public. Her diaries record a troubled marriage, with rows that sometimes escalated into actual fighting. She said talking to him was like dropping a stone down a well that never thumped at the bottom. She named his most famous picture — writing to his sister in January 1942 that Night Hawks would be a fine title for it. He said the painting had more to do with the possibility of predators in the night than with loneliness.

He died of natural causes on May 15, 1967, at 84, in his studio near Washington Square, and was buried in the family plot at Oak Hill Cemetery in Nyack. Jo died 10 months later and lies with him. She left the joint estate, more than 3,000 pieces, to the Whitney, which was long thought to have thrown out her own work — until a researcher found about 200 Jo Hoppers in the basement in 2000. Gail Levin has pointed out that 300 works a Baptist minister reported finding in their attic have no provenance to show the family meant him to have them. In 2020 scholars established that several of Hopper's earliest oils were copies of other painters.

Edward Hopper's life against the full span of the corpus.

• House by the Railroad artwork
  The first oil painting the Museum of Modern Art ever acquired 1925
• Automat artwork
  A woman alone at a table, and the window behind her going black 1927
• Chop Suey artwork
  Mark Rothko paraphrased it directly in an early canvas 1929
• Early Sunday Morning artwork
  First shown under the title Seventh Avenue Shops 1930
• Nighthawks artwork
  Finished January 21 and sold to the Art Institute of Chicago in May for 3,000 dollars 1942
• Two Comedians artwork
  His last oil — Jo said the two figures taking a bow were the two of them 1966

• 1899 aged ~17 Graduates from Nyack High School and starts art by correspondence course He transferred to the New York School of Art and stayed six years.
• 1905 aged ~23 Takes a job designing trade-magazine covers, and comes to detest it
• 1913 aged ~31 Sells his first painting at the Armory Show for 250 dollars, at 31 He had painted Sailing over an earlier self-portrait.
• July 9, 1924 aged 41 Marries the painter Josephine Nivison
• 1927 aged ~45 Two on the Aisle sells for 1,500 dollars and buys him a car The car opened up the New England subjects.
• 1930 aged ~48 Rents a cottage at South Truro on Cape Cod The Hoppers built their own house there in 1934 and returned every summer.
• 1933 aged ~51 The Museum of Modern Art gives him his first large retrospective
• January 21, 1942 aged 59 Finishes Nighthawks The Art Institute of Chicago bought it on May 13 for 3,000 dollars.
• May 15, 1967 aged 84 Dies in his studio near Washington Square at 84 Jo died 10 months later and is buried with him at Nyack.

• Thomas Eakins 1844–1916
  Realist painter celebrated for his anatomically precise portraits and scenes of athletes and surgeons. called him the greatest American painter
• Norman Rockwell 1894–1978
  Illustrator whose idealized depictions of American life graced magazine covers for nearly 50 years. rejected the comparison with
• Grant Wood 1891–1942
  Regionalist painter best known for American Gothic, one of the most parodied images in American art. rejected the comparison with
• Mark Rothko 1903–1970
  Abstract expressionist known for his large color-field paintings that evoke deep emotional responses. paraphrased Chop Suey
• Willem de Kooning 1904–1997
  Abstract expressionist whose gestural paintings helped define the New York School. cited him as an influence
• Alfred Hitchcock 1899–1980
  Director whose Hollywood films and television presence defined modern suspense and influenced generations of American filmmakers. borrowed the house for Psycho