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Bon Voyage—and Don't Forget the Postcards!

Plan your summer vacation—and bone up on your postcard writing! Send a personalized greeting to your family and friends with our new ecard feature.

With each day in 1001 Days and Nights you can share an artwork from the Smithsonian American Art Museum with a friend. Whether your taste runs from the conservative to the avant garde, you will find an appropriate image in our calendar!

From the daily pop-up window, follow the link to "send an ecard" of that artwork. You can also use a link from the month's interface to browse thumbnails of artworks available for postcards.

When you pack for summer vacation, bring along your sketchbook! Many artists have found inspiration on sojourns, including Edward Hopper, whose watercolor inaugurates our ecard feature.

On the trail of new subjects, the Hoppers spent the month of September [1937] at the farm of friends Robert and Irene Slater in South Royalton, Vermont. There he painted several watercolors, including White River at Sharon which shows the stream flowing briskly along sandy banks. The painting is remarkably effective in conveying the temperature of the air and the distinct light of early autumn in what first appears to be uninhabited country. But here, too, industry subtly intrudes. In the center of the composition a road is barely visible and at the upper right, beyond the dying tree, a railroad embankment crosses the land.

See more of Hopper's travel-inspired watercolors from Maine to Mexico in our virtual exhibition An Edward Hopper Scrapbook.

Source: Virginia Mecklenburg. Edward Hopper: The Watercolors (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art in cooperation with W.W. Norton & Company, 1999).

Pictured: Edward Hopper, 1882–1967, White River at Sharon, 1937, watercolor and pencil on paper, 21 3/4 x 29 3/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation.