Summertime
Hopper, Edward, American painter, 1882-1967
1943
oil on canvas
Gift of Dora Sexton Brown, 1962

Biography: Edward Hopper was born in Nyack, New York. He began drawing at the age of five. After high school he enrolled in a correspondence school of illustration in New York City to appease his parents, who felt that a painter's career was insecure. In 1900 he transferred to the New York School of Design, where he lost interest in illustration and began to study painting with Robert Henri and Kenneth Hayes Miller, who advocated painting contemporary urban life. Between 19O6 and 191O Hopper made three trips to Europe, spending most of his time in Paris.

Hopper's early efforts to succeed as a painter failed. After leaving art school he made his living in New York City as a commercial artist and illustrator, painting in his free time. Between 1906 and 1913 he sold only one painting at the 1913 Armory Shows a highly influential international exhibition of modern art which introduced all the major Paris-based art movements of the time, like Cubism, to the American public. Discouraged, he took up etching. His prints were popular and won several prizes. Bolstered by his success and growing recognition as a printmaker, Hopper began to paint again. In 1923 he sold his first painting since the Armory Show of 1913. In 1924 he was able to give up commercial work and illustration, which he had never liked. He often complained that he was not interested in drawing people "grimacing and posturing...What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.'

Influences and Theatrical Context: Hopper studied under Robert Henri from 1900-1906. Henri's somber palette and broad brushstroke are evident in Hopper's early work. But by 1911, his style had changed. Hopper attributed the change to his European stays, where he did not so much study other artists as observe his environment, particularly the light of Paris. The light was different from anything I had ever known," he said later. "The shadows were luminous--more reflected light. I've always been interested in light more than contemporary painters." Paris' architecture also impressed him, and buildings remained an integral part of many of his major paintings.

During Hopper's years in Paris the Parisian art world saw the advent of many art movements-most particularly Fauvism and Cubism. But these revolutionary changes made little impression on Hopper. Basically a conservative artist, he pursued his own fascination with light and shade, architecture, and the narrative implications that dominate his mature work.

Of the American painters, Hopper revered Eakins' sense of stubborn realism and his aloofness from contemporary movements. Hopper also admired the photographers Matthew Brady and Eugene Atget: the former's stark Civil War photographs and the latter's empty spices and melancholy mood. "The pictures aren't cluttered up with detail, he said, you just get what is important ".

Technique Media: During his career as an illustrator from 1906-1924, Hopper produced his illustrations in various media including charcoal, pencil crayons, and ink gouache, watercolors and oil.. While Hopper denigrated his illustrations (of which over 500 still exist), he was very proud of his etchings attributing some of his success in painting to his etching experience. He said, "After I took up etching (in 1915), my painting seemed to crystallize."

During his early years Hopper's oils and watercolors were practically all painted on the spot and often finished in one sitting. On the other hand, most of his mature oils were thoroughly planned in a series of drawings before he put a brush to canvas. He made many on the spot sketches of details but he did not finish these drawings too much, thinking that he might copy them rather than the whole concept. For the same reason, he did not paint color sketches for his paintings. He believed that the best method ultimately was to work the picture out on the canvas. His method became more painstaking over the years: his early oils sometimes took only a week to complete, but from about 1940 on he did no more than two or three oils a year, arid some years only one.

Subject Matter and Style: The contemporary American city was the center of much of Hopper's work. Whereas the Henri group had used the city as a background for human activity, Hopper concentrated on the city itself. It is the city at rest, in its off-hours, that interests Hoppers not the city of traffic, crowds and skyscrapers. His cityscapes are, in effect, urban pastorals. In these cityscapes, individual men and women do appear, but more as parts of the whole scene rather than as leading roles. Often they seem isolated by the impersonality of the city, and seem to epitomize the 'lonely lives of so many city dwellers.

In Summertime, Hopper suggests a sweltering summer day with the short, heavy shadows of noon. The movement of the curtains, blown no doubt by a fan inside the building, emphasizes the airlessness. The opened doorway remains in shadow, denying us a view of the interior beyond the patterned floor of the entrance. The woman's rounded forms, revealed by the clinging translucent dress, contrast with the severe masonry.