![]() ![]() He temporarily escaped by making three trips to Europe, each centered in Paris, ostensibly to study its art scene. He was bound to it by economic necessity until the mid-1920s. In 1905, Hopper landed a part-time job with an advertising agency, where he created cover designs for trade magazines. During his student years, he also painted dozens of nudes, still life studies, landscapes, and portraits, including self-portraits. Hopper's first surviving oil painting to hint at his use of interiors as a theme was Solitary Figure in a Theater (c.1904). Some artists in Henri's circle, including John Sloan, became members of "The Eight", also known as the Ashcan School of American Art. He encouraged them to imbue their work with a modern spirit. Henri encouraged his students to use their art to "make a stir in the world." He also advised his students, "It isn't the subject that counts but what you feel about it" and "Forget about art and paint pictures of what interests you in life." In this manner, Henri influenced Hopper, as well as future artists George Bellows and Rockwell Kent. Sketching from live models, however, proved challenging and somewhat shocking for the conservatively raised Hopper.Īnother of his teachers, artist Robert Henri, taught life class. Early on, Hopper modeled his style after Chase and French Impressionist masters Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas. There, he studied for six years with teachers including William Merritt Chase, who instructed him in oil painting. Soon he transferred to the New York School of Art and Design, the forerunner of Parsons School of Design. Hopper began art studies with a correspondence course in 1899. He later said, "I admire him greatly.I read him over and over again." In developing his self-image and individualistic philosophy of life, Hopper was influenced by the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Hopper's parents insisted that he study commercial art to have a reliable means of income. In high school (he graduated from Nyack High School in 1899), he dreamed of becoming a naval architect, but after graduation declared his intention to pursue a career in art. Later in life, he mostly depicted women as the figures in his paintings. Though a tall and quiet teenager, his prankish sense of humor found outlet in his art, sometimes in depictions of immigrants or of women dominating men in comical situations. In his early self-portraits, Hopper tended to represent himself as skinny, ungraceful, and homely. Hopper's other earliest oils, such as Old ice pond at Nyack and his c.1898 painting Ships, have been identified as copies of paintings by artists including Bruce Crane and Edward Moran. In 1895, he created his first signed oil painting, Rowboat in Rocky Cove, which he copied from a reproduction in The Art Interchange, a popular journal for amateur artists. By his teens, he was working in pen-and-ink, charcoal, watercolor, and oil-drawing from nature while also making political cartoons. The detailed examination of light and shadow that continued throughout his career is already visible in these early works. Among the earliest of these drawings are charcoal sketches of geometric shapes, a vase, bowl, cup, and boxes. Hopper first began signing and dating his drawings at the age of 10. Vase (1893), example of Edward Hopper's earliest signed and dated artwork with attention to light and shadow. Hopper's parents encouraged his art and kept him amply supplied with materials, instructional magazines, and illustrated books. He also demonstrated his mother's artistic heritage. He readily absorbed his father's intellectual tendencies and love of French and Russian cultures. Hopper was a good student in grade school, and, by the time he was five, his talent with drawing was already apparent. It is now operated as the Edward Hopper House Museum & Study Center, serving as a nonprofit community cultural center featuring exhibitions, workshops, lectures, performances, and special events. His birthplace and boyhood home was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000. His father had a mild nature, and the household was dominated by women: Hopper's mother, grandmother, sister, and maid. They were raised in a strict Baptist home. Edward and his sister, Marion, attended both private and public schools. Although not as successful as his forebears, Garrett provided well for his two children with considerable help from his wife's inheritance. His parents, of mostly Dutch ancestry, were Elizabeth Griffiths Smith and Garret Henry Hopper, a dry-goods merchant. He was one of two children of a comfortably well-off family. Hopper was born in 1882 in Nyack, New York, a yacht-building center on the Hudson River north of New York City. Childhood home of Edward Hopper in Nyack, New York ![]()
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