Artist of The Week: Edward Hopper; the morning sun

"Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world."

🎨 Edward Hopper

🎨 July 22, 1882, Upper Nyack, New York, United States

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🎨 American painter

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🎨 Realism

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🎨American realist painter and printmaker

Facts

✅ Edward Hopper was an American realist painter and printmaker.

✅ He was one of two children of a comfortably well-off family.

✅ Young Edward spent his days by the river, sketchpad in hand, observing and drawing the rigging and building of boats

✅ After graduating high school in 1899, Hopper's parents encouraged him to study commercial illustration instead of fine art

✅ Spouse: Josephine Hopper (1924–196

✅ Hopper died at the aged of 84, May 15, 1967

New York City, New York

Famous Painting🖌

Nighthawks (1942) / Morning Sun (1952)

Title: The Morning Sun

Artist: Edward Hopper

Medium: Oil paint

Subject: Loneliness

Created: 1952–1952

Periods: Neoclassicism, Modernism

Much of Hopper’s early success can be attributed to Jo, his wife, manager, and the subject of this painting.

By the time the couple married in 1924, both were in their 40s. Jo, a painter and actress, was the more established of the two.

In 1923 she was invited to participate in a group exhibition of American and European artists at the Brooklyn Museum, and encouraged the curators to include her husband’s work as well.

The exhibition resulted in the first museum acquisition of his work.

Jo was Hopper’s only female model from 1923 until Hopper’s death in 1967, though he never considered his paintings to be portraits of her, using her as a stand-in for “any woman.”

At the time of the painting of Morning Sun, Jo was 69 years old, yet she is rendered in a rather idealized, youthful depiction.

In Hopper’s sketches for the painting, you can see him abstract away the specifics of her, the better to give the scene a sense of being a larger, symbolic moment.