GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Between 1927 and 1930, Edward Hopper painted two landscapes featuring the Two Lights lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. For Hopper, the play of sunlight and shadow across the buildings offered rich formal possibilities, which he exploited in a brilliant blue sky and strong contrast between light and dark.
Perhaps one of the most enigmatic of 20th century American artists. Hopper created indelible images of the American scene, both urban and rural. His quiet, brooding paintings evoke both the isolation and the exposure associated with modern life.
Excerpt from
Sue Canterbury, DMA label text, 2018
NOTES
Created in 1927
born in Nyack, NY
Extensive bibliography--did not have time to note here
Gail Davitt, biographical essays, education files, 1986-1987.
The work of Edward Hopper grows out of the realism of Henri and Eakins. Loneliness and isolation as a part of the American condition are the main themes of Hopper's paintings. He advocated a greater awareness of the American tradition to achieve independence from French art. Hopper's visionary purity of form is a distinctive American kind of modernism, quite unlike Cubism. In 1930, Hopper purchased a house on the coast of Maine, and after this his landscapes were usually based on Cape Cod scenes. Hopper's paintings are known for their economy of detail, simplicity of compostition and broad massing of light and shadow.
Lighthouse Hill, 1927, oil on canvas, 28-1/4 x 39-1/2"
This work illustrates the brooding power with which Hopper endows houses and inanimate
objects. The objective vision of the artist creates a powerful view in which the
functional, clean manmade lighthouse is contrasted with the irregular shapings of
nature, both in the water and the coastline.
The work of Edward Hopper, one of America's best artists of the 20th century, also stems from the realism of Henri and Eakins. Loneliness and isolation as a part of the American condition are Hopper's main themes; they are fused with his semi-abstract, planar forms. Hopper advocated independence from French art and a greater awareness of American experience, stating that "In general it can be said that a nation's art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people." Unlike members of The Eight, Hopper's work maintains an objectivity and detachment
which keeps it from becoming sentimental and gives it a universal appeal.
Lighthouse Hill, painted in 1927, depicts a site in Maine. After 1930, when Hopper purchased a house in Truro, Mass., his landscapes were usually based on Cape Cod scenes. The DMA's painting is a good example of Hopper's haunting style: an economy of detail, simplicity in composition, the broad massing of light and shadow: all of which are used to create firm, solid images (such as the monumental lighthouse) and a sense of time frozen. He also had an interest in architectural forms, especially those of a past period no longer fashionable, as seen in the house in Lighthouse Hill.
Hopper's uncanny ability to give a powerful presence to inanimate objects pervades the painting. Hopper is especially known for his paintings of city interiors, where the viewer is a detached spectator looking through the window, and for his visions of empty streets, motels and scenes of daily life, which share with Lighthouse Hill an hallucinatory power.
Excerpt from Anne Bromberg, "Description of Selected Paintings in the Collection," DMA Education files, 1987.
biography from Dallas Collects American Art, page 140
A practitioner of what might be termed romantic realism, Hopper developed early in life a figurative style
that raises his observations of modern Americana through suggestion, mood, and quiet symbolism to a
higher psychological plane. Superficially illustrative in approach, his work actually goes well beyond
narration. Hopper was born in Nyack, ew York, and after high school studied with the Correspondence
School of Illustrating in New York and then with Henri, Chase, and Miller at the New York School of An
(1900-1906). He worked for a while as an illustrator, and in t 906 and again in 1909 and 1910 went to
Paris, where exposure to avant-garde movements had little effect on his painterly realism. Hopper exhibited
in the Armory Show of 1913, but between 1915 and '25 worked as an illustrator and etcher to support
himself. After his first one-man show at the Whitney Studio Club in 1920 and an exhibition of watercolors
at the Rehn Gallery in 1924 his career began to prosper. Now entering artistic maturity, his individualistic
views of architecture, workers, and street scenes conveyed a strong note of solitude and nostalgia. In 1925
a trip to New Mexico introduced western landscape into his themes. A second one-man show at Rehn's
in 1927 was followed by a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1933. Hopper built a studio
at South Truro on Cape Code in 1934 and generally summered there for the rest of his life, concentrating
thereafter on New England subjects. He was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1945
and the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1955. During a long career his art showed little reaction
to changing fashions, remaining steadfastly devoted to itS original humanist values.
Passage about Railroad encampment 1931
In large numbers of oils and watercolors Hopper isolated on lonely houses, made more remote and anonymous by the absence of people and activity of any kind and by shuttered windows. Here a railroad bed slices across the foreground, cutting off the house both physically and psychologically. The lone seminel of a telephone pole stands to one side, a compositional device frequently used by Hopper. Despite the warm sunlight and the gay
blue of the shutters, it is a slightly forbidding image. Is the house deserted? Or is it just closed up for the season? Who lives or lived there? Such questions become part of the mystery and visual poetry that Hopper manages to spin from what otherwise would be the most banal of subjects. Of paramount importance in making such a theme effective is Hopper's technical skill as a watercolorist. The rich variations of wash he achieves, the
almost physical sense of sun and warmth, and the straightforward but highly assured and architectural
compOSition all help give his theme authority.
In this particular case it is possible to identify the subject, albeit conflictingly, from other views
Hopper painted of the house from a different viewpoint in 1931 and '32. A watercolor in the
Whitney Museum is entitled Captain Kelly's House and an oil painting in a private collection based
fairly closely upon this watercolor is called the Dauphinee House (Gail Levin, Edward Hopper:
Tbe Art and tbe Artist, 1980, pis. 222 and 415). Hopper spent the summers of 1931-32 at South Truro
on Cape Cod, and this house was presumably nearby. The close stylistic relationship between the
exhibited watercolor and Captain Kelly's House, known to date from 1931, suggest the same dating
for the former.
1958.9 Hopper, Lighthouse Hill
Edward Hopper's Lighthouse Hill, generously purchased for the Museum by the Purnell family is one of the most beloved works owned by the Dallas Museum of Art. Hopper used the lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, as a compositional element within this painting to dramatize light and form. As the artist often imbued his works with psychological meaning, the majestic structure, strongly silhouetted against the blue sky, conveys both majesty and solitude.
During the summer of 1927, Edward Hopper discovered the Two Lights lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. The play of sunlight and shadow across the buildings offered rich formal possibilities, which he exploited in a brilliant blue sky and strong contrasts of light and dark. Hopper separated the lighthouse and keeper’s residence from the viewer with a steeply sloping hill, whose alternating areas of warm and cool color increase the tinge of remoteness provoked by the shadowed windows and absence of human figures. Perhaps one of the most emblematic of modern American artists, Hopper created indelible images of the American scene, both urban and rural. His quiet, brooding paintings evoke both the isolation and vulnerability associated with modern life.
Bonnie Pitman, ed., Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 251.
__________
During the summer of 1927, Edward Hopper discovered the Two Lights lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Over the course of three years, he would paint the lighthouse twice. For Hopper, the play of sunlight and shadow across the buildings offered rich formal possibilities, which he exploited in a brilliant blue sky and strong contrast between light and dark.
Perhaps one of the most enigmatic of modern American artists, Hopper created indelible images of the American scene, both urban and rural. His quiet, brooding paintings evoke both the isolation and exposure associated with modern life.
Wiliam Keyse Rudolph, July 2005
"It is noteworthy that though the exposed point at Two Lights was known for its spectacular surf (the kind of subject favored by Winslow Homer, who had lived and died only a few miles away, at Prout's Neck), Hopper concentrated on the man-made structures." Goodrich, Lloyd, Edward Hopper, Exhibition and catalogue by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
"At the time he was making these paintings, mariners were protesting the proposed dismantling of the west tower of Cape Elizabeth Light, and Hopper's art thus comes to memorialize the partial obsolescence of an important beacon of nineteenth-century transportation and industry." Hobbs, Robert, Edward Hopper, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York in association with The National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
Youth and Beauty First Glances--TAZ:
Two Lights lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, appears atop a steep hill in this landscape painting devoid of people. The scene seems abandoned and frozen in time, a characteristic of Edward Hopper's work.
Hopper visited Cape Elizabeth in 1927, yet in Lighthouse Hill he eliminates details that he might have observed firsthand, such as a rocky shoreline. Instead, he focuses on the effects of sunlight on the two structures.
Small towns along the ocean or in the country offered respite from the fast pace of the 1920s city. Some artists during the decade chose to paint rural landscapes as a way to represent a more honest and simple way of life.
Hopper, Edward (American, 1882-1967)
Cultures
Geography
Depicted location: Cape Elizabeth (Maine/United States): TGN: 2044555
Process/materials
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
From 1958: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Maurice Purnell, (purchased from M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York) [1]
[1] The name of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, founded in 1933, was changed to the Dallas Museum of Art in 1983.
AUDIO ASSETS
- UMO: 15648657
- 2013 lecture- http://www.dma.org/audio/edward-hopper-drawing-painting-memory-imagination UMO: 13316772
- 2013 lecture- http://www.dma.org/audio/edward-hopper-intimate-biography UMO: 13316582
- Gallery talk- http://www.dma.org/audio/lighting-technical-look-hopper-drawings UMO: 16082688
VIDEO ASSETS
IMAGE ASSETS
WEB RESOURCES
- Edward Hopper, Biography~Read more about Edward Hopper at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Lighthouse at Two Lights~Explore another work by Hopper depicting the same lighthouse at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- United States Lighthouse Society~Learn more about lighthouses at the United States Lighthouse Society website.
ARCHIVAL RESOURCES
FUN FACTS
TEACHING IDEAS
RULES
Apply to objects where number equals 1958.9
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General Description
Between 1927 and 1930, Edward Hopper painted two landscapes featuring the Two Lights lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. For Hopper, the play of sunlight and shadow across the buildings offered rich formal possibilities, which he exploited in a brilliant blue sky and strong contrast between light and dark.
Perhaps one of the most enigmatic of 20th century American artists. Hopper created indelible images of the American scene, both urban and rural. His quiet, brooding paintings evoke both the isolation and the exposure associated with modern life.
Excerpt from
Sue Canterbury, DMA label text, 2018
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
Web Resources
- Edward Hopper, Biography~Read more about Edward Hopper at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Lighthouse at Two Lights~Explore another work by Hopper depicting the same lighthouse at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- United States Lighthouse Society~Learn more about lighthouses at the United States Lighthouse Society website.
Notes
Created in 1927
born in Nyack, NY
Extensive bibliography--did not have time to note here
Gail Davitt, biographical essays, education files, 1986-1987.
The work of Edward Hopper grows out of the realism of Henri and Eakins. Loneliness and isolation as a part of the American condition are the main themes of Hopper's paintings. He advocated a greater awareness of the American tradition to achieve independence from French art. Hopper's visionary purity of form is a distinctive American kind of modernism, quite unlike Cubism. In 1930, Hopper purchased a house on the coast of Maine, and after this his landscapes were usually based on Cape Cod scenes. Hopper's paintings are known for their economy of detail, simplicity of compostition and broad massing of light and shadow.
Lighthouse Hill, 1927, oil on canvas, 28-1/4 x 39-1/2"
This work illustrates the brooding power with which Hopper endows houses and inanimate
objects. The objective vision of the artist creates a powerful view in which the
functional, clean manmade lighthouse is contrasted with the irregular shapings of
nature, both in the water and the coastline.
The work of Edward Hopper, one of America's best artists of the 20th century, also stems from the realism of Henri and Eakins. Loneliness and isolation as a part of the American condition are Hopper's main themes; they are fused with his semi-abstract, planar forms. Hopper advocated independence from French art and a greater awareness of American experience, stating that "In general it can be said that a nation's art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people." Unlike members of The Eight, Hopper's work maintains an objectivity and detachment
which keeps it from becoming sentimental and gives it a universal appeal.
Lighthouse Hill, painted in 1927, depicts a site in Maine. After 1930, when Hopper purchased a house in Truro, Mass., his landscapes were usually based on Cape Cod scenes. The DMA's painting is a good example of Hopper's haunting style: an economy of detail, simplicity in composition, the broad massing of light and shadow: all of which are used to create firm, solid images (such as the monumental lighthouse) and a sense of time frozen. He also had an interest in architectural forms, especially those of a past period no longer fashionable, as seen in the house in Lighthouse Hill.
Hopper's uncanny ability to give a powerful presence to inanimate objects pervades the painting. Hopper is especially known for his paintings of city interiors, where the viewer is a detached spectator looking through the window, and for his visions of empty streets, motels and scenes of daily life, which share with Lighthouse Hill an hallucinatory power.
Excerpt from Anne Bromberg, "Description of Selected Paintings in the Collection," DMA Education files, 1987.
biography from Dallas Collects American Art, page 140
A practitioner of what might be termed romantic realism, Hopper developed early in life a figurative style
that raises his observations of modern Americana through suggestion, mood, and quiet symbolism to a
higher psychological plane. Superficially illustrative in approach, his work actually goes well beyond
narration. Hopper was born in Nyack, ew York, and after high school studied with the Correspondence
School of Illustrating in New York and then with Henri, Chase, and Miller at the New York School of An
(1900-1906). He worked for a while as an illustrator, and in t 906 and again in 1909 and 1910 went to
Paris, where exposure to avant-garde movements had little effect on his painterly realism. Hopper exhibited
in the Armory Show of 1913, but between 1915 and '25 worked as an illustrator and etcher to support
himself. After his first one-man show at the Whitney Studio Club in 1920 and an exhibition of watercolors
at the Rehn Gallery in 1924 his career began to prosper. Now entering artistic maturity, his individualistic
views of architecture, workers, and street scenes conveyed a strong note of solitude and nostalgia. In 1925
a trip to New Mexico introduced western landscape into his themes. A second one-man show at Rehn's
in 1927 was followed by a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1933. Hopper built a studio
at South Truro on Cape Code in 1934 and generally summered there for the rest of his life, concentrating
thereafter on New England subjects. He was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1945
and the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1955. During a long career his art showed little reaction
to changing fashions, remaining steadfastly devoted to itS original humanist values.
Passage about Railroad encampment 1931
In large numbers of oils and watercolors Hopper isolated on lonely houses, made more remote and anonymous by the absence of people and activity of any kind and by shuttered windows. Here a railroad bed slices across the foreground, cutting off the house both physically and psychologically. The lone seminel of a telephone pole stands to one side, a compositional device frequently used by Hopper. Despite the warm sunlight and the gay
blue of the shutters, it is a slightly forbidding image. Is the house deserted? Or is it just closed up for the season? Who lives or lived there? Such questions become part of the mystery and visual poetry that Hopper manages to spin from what otherwise would be the most banal of subjects. Of paramount importance in making such a theme effective is Hopper's technical skill as a watercolorist. The rich variations of wash he achieves, the
almost physical sense of sun and warmth, and the straightforward but highly assured and architectural
compOSition all help give his theme authority.
In this particular case it is possible to identify the subject, albeit conflictingly, from other views
Hopper painted of the house from a different viewpoint in 1931 and '32. A watercolor in the
Whitney Museum is entitled Captain Kelly's House and an oil painting in a private collection based
fairly closely upon this watercolor is called the Dauphinee House (Gail Levin, Edward Hopper:
Tbe Art and tbe Artist, 1980, pis. 222 and 415). Hopper spent the summers of 1931-32 at South Truro
on Cape Cod, and this house was presumably nearby. The close stylistic relationship between the
exhibited watercolor and Captain Kelly's House, known to date from 1931, suggest the same dating
for the former.
1958.9 Hopper, Lighthouse Hill
Edward Hopper's Lighthouse Hill, generously purchased for the Museum by the Purnell family is one of the most beloved works owned by the Dallas Museum of Art. Hopper used the lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, as a compositional element within this painting to dramatize light and form. As the artist often imbued his works with psychological meaning, the majestic structure, strongly silhouetted against the blue sky, conveys both majesty and solitude.
During the summer of 1927, Edward Hopper discovered the Two Lights lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. The play of sunlight and shadow across the buildings offered rich formal possibilities, which he exploited in a brilliant blue sky and strong contrasts of light and dark. Hopper separated the lighthouse and keeper’s residence from the viewer with a steeply sloping hill, whose alternating areas of warm and cool color increase the tinge of remoteness provoked by the shadowed windows and absence of human figures. Perhaps one of the most emblematic of modern American artists, Hopper created indelible images of the American scene, both urban and rural. His quiet, brooding paintings evoke both the isolation and vulnerability associated with modern life.
Bonnie Pitman, ed., Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 251.
__________
During the summer of 1927, Edward Hopper discovered the Two Lights lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Over the course of three years, he would paint the lighthouse twice. For Hopper, the play of sunlight and shadow across the buildings offered rich formal possibilities, which he exploited in a brilliant blue sky and strong contrast between light and dark.
Perhaps one of the most enigmatic of modern American artists, Hopper created indelible images of the American scene, both urban and rural. His quiet, brooding paintings evoke both the isolation and exposure associated with modern life.
Wiliam Keyse Rudolph, July 2005
"It is noteworthy that though the exposed point at Two Lights was known for its spectacular surf (the kind of subject favored by Winslow Homer, who had lived and died only a few miles away, at Prout's Neck), Hopper concentrated on the man-made structures." Goodrich, Lloyd, Edward Hopper, Exhibition and catalogue by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
"At the time he was making these paintings, mariners were protesting the proposed dismantling of the west tower of Cape Elizabeth Light, and Hopper's art thus comes to memorialize the partial obsolescence of an important beacon of nineteenth-century transportation and industry." Hobbs, Robert, Edward Hopper, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York in association with The National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
Youth and Beauty First Glances--TAZ:
Two Lights lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, appears atop a steep hill in this landscape painting devoid of people. The scene seems abandoned and frozen in time, a characteristic of Edward Hopper's work.
Hopper visited Cape Elizabeth in 1927, yet in Lighthouse Hill he eliminates details that he might have observed firsthand, such as a rocky shoreline. Instead, he focuses on the effects of sunlight on the two structures.
Small towns along the ocean or in the country offered respite from the fast pace of the 1920s city. Some artists during the decade chose to paint rural landscapes as a way to represent a more honest and simple way of life.
Hopper, Edward (American, 1882-1967)
Cultures
Geography
Depicted location: Cape Elizabeth (Maine/United States): TGN: 2044555
Process/materials
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
From 1958: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Maurice Purnell, (purchased from M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York) [1]
[1] The name of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, founded in 1933, was changed to the Dallas Museum of Art in 1983.
AUDIO ASSETS
- UMO: 15648657
- 2013 lecture- http://www.dma.org/audio/edward-hopper-drawing-painting-memory-imagination UMO: 13316772
- 2013 lecture- http://www.dma.org/audio/edward-hopper-intimate-biography UMO: 13316582
- Gallery talk- http://www.dma.org/audio/lighting-technical-look-hopper-drawings UMO: 16082688
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