Edward Hopper. Light and Dark. Gerry Souter

      Illustrating for cash was also a thief of time. Normally a slow starter under any circumstances, Hopper’s output of paintings dwindled to two in 1911. The oil Sailing depicts a “Knockabout sloop rig – jib and mainsail taking up most of the canvas…” in Hopper’s description. It is a subject painted from memory of his early days on the Hudson River. Again, using a minimum of strokes, the open cockpit sailboat is leaning hard over to port with its sails full, leaving a pale wake on an almost opaque sea. The sails and sky are heavily painted, covering a self-portrait that just peeps through to the naked eye if you are looking for it.

      The other painting, Blackwell’s Island, is a dark and moody affair with a composition that recalls Le Bistrot, but with the opposite effect. Its provenance demonstrates Hopper’s desire to crack the code and step into the limelight. Robert Henri had arrived triumphant from Europe in 1901 to settle in New York. From the window of his apartment on East 58th Street, he had a view of Blackwell’s Island in the East River and painted a picture post-card winter scene complete with ice floes. In 1909, George Bellows, one of Henri’s anointed stars, chose the island, highlighting the Queensborough Bridge with the busy Manhattan waterfront in the foreground. In 1910, Julius Golz – another Henri favourite – won critical praise at the Independents’ Exhibition for his stab at Blackwell’s Island.

      Having moved from his studio among the hookers on 14th Street, Hopper had found space at 53 East 59th Street very near Robert Henri’s studio. Henri and two of his acolytes had found success with Blackwell’s Island and so, it appears, might Hopper. He was aware of James MacNeil Whistler, whose pictures were shown at the Museum of Modern Art in 1910, and chose an approach to the island that reflected Whistler’s “Aestheticism.”

      Whistler’s moody tonalism was in direct opposition to the Impressionists. In fact, Whistler’s apparent move to the past, the Nocturnes, are closer in spirit to modern art than is Impressionism. The concentration in the Nocturnes on purely formal values of colour and line traces a direct descent to the development of abstraction in the early twentieth century.[12] His use of thinned oil paints applied spontaneously to create images from his memory must have especially appealed to Hopper.

      In Hopper’s Blackwell’s Island, the scene is moonlit and composed in the manner of Le Bistrot with the bridge span occupying the left side of the canvas. A tug boat chugs in midstream beneath the Queensborough Bridge and lights wink on in houses scattered along both banks. A few stabs of zinc white create a single reflection of moonlight, grabbing the painting’s almost geographic centre. It was with paintings such as Blackwell’s Island as well as many of Hopper’s later works that abstract painters acknowledged a kinship in use of colour, line and planes.

      If Edward had entertained the idea that the much-painted Blackwell’s Island would be his entrée into the more successful company of his former schoolmates, he missed his chance. Robert Henri decided to pick up the Independent Artists concept one more time and produced a series of unjuried shows at the MacDowell Club at 108 West 59th Street. He designed his new programme around exhibits of eight to twelve artists showing for two weeks at a time. Each group was responsible for the painters chosen to exhibit. Hopper was chosen along with Sloan, Glackens, Luks, Speicher, Leon Kroll and Henri.

      The series of shows began in November 1911, and Hopper’s turn to exhibit was scheduled for 22 February to 5 March 1912. The artists showing with him were Guy du Bois (Hopper’s personal champion), George Bellows, Leon Kroll, Mountford Coolidge, Randall Davey, May Wilson Preston and Rufus J. Dryer. Hopper brought five oils to the exhibit’s bare walls: River Boat, Valley of the Seine, Le Bistrot) (Americanised to The Wine Shop), British Steamer and – the only piece of “American” art – the jaunty little sloop, Sailing.

      Guy du Bois, who must have invested quite a bit of personal vouching for Hopper to get him in after the last French debacle, was most likely stunned.

      Once again, Hopper sold nothing and was rendered invisible by the critics. Once again, he trudged back home with his shopworn French pictures and began looking for illustration work. How is it possible for an intelligent, gifted person to keep pushing a product that nobody wants? He had already followed Henri’s footsteps across Europe three times. He moved his studio to an address just down the street from Henri. He even painted the same subject as Henri. He had great friends and supporters among his former schoolmates. Moreover, the idea of schlepping his portfolio of illustration samples door to door hunting for jobs drawing pictures of suspenders, straw hats, debutantes, polo matches, deskbound bosses and muscular stevedores was anathema to him.

      Edward Hopper wanted success but it had to come on his terms. After being the hero for the first twenty years of his life – the perfect son, the star pupil, the best prankster, the gifted technician – he needed to maintain that level of applauded accomplishment. The voice he had developed so far was one of minimals, of impressions. He joked late in his life about “still being an Impressionist” and that is probably what he meant. His was an art of suggestions rendered so deftly as to seem to be actually there. In addition, the emotion coming from the canvas regardless of subject matter seemed diaphanous, just out of reach, implied just as three swipes with the brush created a ship’s hull and a scribble of zinc white and dabs of carmine created a French town with red roofs in the distance.

      It was as if Hopper himself was an implied suggestion:

      27. Gloucester Harbor, 1912. Oil on canvas, 66.5 × 96.8 cm. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Josephine N. Hopper Bequest.

      Changing Times

      It must have been with a sigh of resignation that he once again took up his portfolio and plunged into the faceless crowds rushing along the pavements, dodging horse manure in the streets, being startled by the beep of horseless carriage horns and the hissing pop valves on steam cars. He endured the press of bodies on the electric trolley-cars that groaned and clanked towards yet another illustration job that he hated and needed.

      There were plenty of jobs open to Edward Hopper. System, the Magazine of Business hired him and he began a long relationship with the publisher drawing men and women in office situations. The pay was good and he received enough assignments to consider venturing from New York to paint new subjects. He chose Gloucester, Massachusetts on the Eastern seaboard as his destination and gregarious Leon Kroll as his travelling companion.

      The tall taciturn Baptist and

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