‘Edward Hopper’ At Museum Of Fine Arts, Boston

Boston, Mass.

:"It is hard to think of another painter who is getting more of the quality of America in his canvases than Edward Hopper," art historian Lloyd Goodrich once observed during the artist's lifetime. Hopper, the great chronicler of the rootlessness and anonymity of modern life, is one of the most enduringly popular and important American painters of the Twentieth Century. With an unerring eye and ample skill, he explored the psyche and surroundings of his fellow citizens in works that have become icons of our art.

Hopper's depictions of the mundane in urban, rural and seacoast settings — restaurants and diners, gas stations, hotel rooms and lobbies, house exteriors, domestic interiors, office scenes, empty streets and lighthouses — captured universal moments of beauty, loneliness and introspection. His art captured the timelessness of the ordinary and the uneventful in ways that continue to resonate with viewers. His imagery has significantly influenced artists, photographers, filmmakers, writers and facets of popular culture.

"Edward Hopper," organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the National Gallery of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago, features approximately 100 paintings, watercolors and prints dating primarily from 1925 to 1950. It will be on view in Boston through August 19, 2007.

"Hopper was best known as a great image maker, but he was also a masterful painter," notes exhibition co-curator Carol Troyen, John Moors Cabot Curator of American Paintings at the MFA, Boston. "His memorable depictions of everyday life are also elegantly constructed compositions, and the works in 'Edward Hopper' demonstrate the sensuous contrasts of sun and shadow in his oils and the evocative surfaces of his light-filled watercolors."

Hopper contended that his art was rooted in reality and observation, but its often puzzling imagery stimulates viewers to speculate about causes and outcomes. Overall, the dramas he depicted reflect the mood and feel of his own time.

Born into a prosperous family in Nyack, N.Y., Hopper (1882–1967) grew up within sight of the Hudson River, developing a lifelong love of water and boats. His parents encouraged their son's interest in art from an early age.

After graduating from high school and studying illustrating briefly, in 1901 Hopper began studies at the New York School of Art under such celebrated teachers as William Merritt Chase, Kenneth Hayes Miller and, most importantly, Robert Henri. The latter encouraged his students to paint with gusto and to find their subjects in the everyday world around them. Among Hopper's fellow students were George Bellows, Rockwell Kent, George Luks and John Sloan.

Predisposed by Henri's teaching to admire French masters of earlier times, Hopper's three trips to Paris between 1906 and 1910 helped shape his artistic identity as an observant outsider. By 1913 he was ensconced in a fourth-floor walkup at 3 Washington Square North in Greenwich Village, where he lived for the rest of his life.