Artist in Focus - Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. His finely calculated paintings of urban and rural scenes reflected his personal vision of modern American life. Today, he is regarded as one of the most enduring American painters of the 20th century.

Hopper was born in 1882 in Nyack, New York. He studied at the New York School of Illustration and then at the more prestigious New York School of Art. In 1906, he travelled to Europe for the first time to study in Paris.

Until the age of 40, Hopper’s career was marked by disappointment and he made a living through commercial illustration. His breakthrough as a painter came in 1923, when the Brooklyn Museum bought his watercolour “The Mansard Roof” for $100. The following year he began showing his work with prominent New York art dealer Frank Rehn. His oils and watercolours sold well and critics applauded his quiet realism, use of light, and above all, his ability to reveal beauty in the most mundane subjects.

In 1933, the Museum of Modern Art gave Hopper his first large scale exhibition. The exhibition included many of his signature subjects: Victorian houses, New York restaurants, automats, seascapes and views into quiet, middle-class apartments.