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Edward Hopper Portrait

Edward Hopper

Born:
Nyack, New York 1882

Died:
New York, New York 1967

Active in:

  • Cape Cod, Massachusetts

Photo Caption:
Edward Hopper, Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum J0001707.

Biography

Realist painter who studied with Robert Henri and Kenneth Hayes Miller at the New York School of Art. One of the country's most honored artists, Hopper was internationally acclaimed in his lifetime and was elected to both the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1945) and the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1955). He poetically painted the isolation and detachment of modern life; Nighthawks (1942) is arguably his best-known composition.

Joan Stahl American Artists in Photographic Portraits from the Peter A. Juley & Son Collection (Washington, D.C. and Mineola, New York: National Museum of American Art and Dover Publications, Inc., 1995)

Additional Biographies

Edward Hopper started his career as an illustrator, but soon switched to painting and studied with the artist Robert Henri at the New York School of Art. He made three trips to Paris between 1906 and 1910, where he stayed with a French family and painted scenes of the city. Back in the United States, he resumed his commercial work, creating engravings and illustrations of everyday American life. These proved such a success that he was encouraged to return to easel painting, and by 1927 he had established himself with an exhibition in New York City. Hopper painted characteristic American subjects, from movie theaters and restaurants to New England lighthouses. His images capture dramatic areas of light and shadow and often evoke a strong sense of isolation and loneliness, even when there is more than one figure portrayed.

Works in the collection by
Edward Hopper

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