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"The House by the Railroad" (1925) shows a large, white house. The painting does not show the bottom of the house. It is blocked by railroad tracks. Cutting scenes off in surprising ways was an important part of Hopper's style. He became famous for paintings that are mysterious, that look incomplete or that leave viewers with questions.
Shadows make many parts of the home in "The House by the Railroad" look dark. Some of the windows look like they are open, which makes the viewer wonder what is inside the house. However, only dark, empty space can be seen through the windows. Strange shadows, dark spaces, and areas with light were important parts of many Hopper paintings.
There are no people in the painting, and no evidence of other houses nearby. Hopper was famous for showing loneliness in his art. People often said that, even when there were many people in his paintings, each person seems to be alone in his or her own world.
During the great economic depression of the nineteen thirties, many people saw Hopper's lonely, mysterious paintings of everyday subjects. They liked the pictures because they seemed to show life honestly, without trying to make it happier or prettier than it really was. As a result, Hopper continued to sell many paintings during those years, even though most Americans were very poor.
In nineteen forty-two, Hopper painted his most famous work, "Nighthawks" (1942). The painting shows four people in an eating-place called a diner late at night. They look sad, tired, and lonely. Two of them look like they are in a love relationship. But they do not appear to be talking to each other. The dark night that surrounds them is mysterious and tense. There is no door in the painting, which makes the subjects seem like they might be trapped.
Hopper painted "Nighthawks" soon after the Japanese bomb attack against the United States at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Many people thought the painting showed the fear and unhappiness that most Americans were feeling after the attack. The painting became very famous. Today, most Americans still recognize it. The painting now hangs in a famous museum in Chicago, Illinois.
"Nighthawks" was not Edward Hopper's only great success. In nineteen fifty, he finished a painting called "Cape Cod Morning" (1950). It shows a brightly colored house in the country. In the middle of the painting, a woman leans on a table and looks out a window. She looks very sad. However, nothing in the painting gives any idea about why she would be sad. Today this painting hangs in a special place in the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington. It is one the paintings we noted at the beginning of this program.
Room in New york, 1932
Hotel Room, 1931
Automat, 1927
"Chop Suey" (1929) is one of the few pictures in which Hopper portrayed people facing each other. In this lightly down wood looking view of one of the Chinese restaurant, popular in early XX century in New York, two women are drinking tea at a table both dressed in the same tight fitting sweater and hat. A couple are sitting in profile at a table behind them the woman cut off by the edge of the picture.
Through the window we can see part of the restaurant sign and the word Suey. In this skillful interplay of diagonals and verticals and light and dark areas, Hopper was at the hight of his artistic powers. When Hopper showed the picture at his one man exhibition at the C Institute in 1937 one critic described the two figures as easy women waiting to pick up man for the evening but they can be interpreted very differently.
The woman facing us resembles Jo, Hopper’s wife and she is talking to some one who appears to be her double and this may well be why the painting has such a strange atmosphere.
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