The
major Twentieth Century American Realist painter Edward
Hopper was born in Nyack, New York in 1882. After
completing six years of study at the New York School of
Art in 1906, he took a number of extended trips to Paris
to paint.
Earning his living as a commercial artist in New York
during his twenties and thirties, he continued to paint
and exhibit his work; "Sailing", for example,
was included in the Armory Show of 1913.
That same year he moved to the Greenwich Village quarters
he would occupy for the rest of his life, and soon
thereafter began a longtime tradition of summering on the
New England coast. In 1924, when he was forty-two, every
painting in his one-man show at a New York gallery was
sold, and his reputation as an overnight success was
firmly established. Hopper now devoted himself entirely
to his art, but he was distrustful of popularity and
worked slowly and methodically, completing one or two
paintings a year until his death in 1967.
His work is distinguished by his enigmatic yet precise
representation of the solitude inherent in urban
landscapes and interiors, human relationships, the open
road, and the expansive sea.
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