HOPPER, Edward (Nyack, 1882 – New York, 1967)
Edward Hopper was born on 22 July 1882, in Nyack, New York. He attended the New York School of Art between 1900 and 1906, where
he studied painting with Robert Henri, William Merritt Chase and Kenneth Hayes Miller. Hopper worked briefly as an illustrator before taking the first of three trips to Europe, visiting Paris, London, Amsterdam and Brussels in 1906–1907. In 1909 he went to Paris, and in 1910 he returned to Paris and visited Madrid. Hopper supported himself as a commercial artist but also exhibited his paintings in group shows, notably the Exhibition of Independent Artists, 1910, and, annually at the MacDowell Club, New York, from 1912 to 1916. Hopper’s painting, Sailing, was included in the New York Armory Show of 1913. From the 1910s, Hopper spent summers in rural New England. His first one-man show was at the Whitney Studio Club in 1920, however it was not until his highly successful exhibition at Frank K. M. Rehn Gallery in 1924, that he was to give up commercial art work. That year he married Josephine Verstille Nivison, also a painter and a former actress. In 1933 the Museum of Modern Art held the first retrospective exhibition of Hopper’s work which travelled to the Arts Club of Chicago the following year. In 1934 the Hoppers built their summer home in South Truro, Massachusetts. They travelled to Mexico
in 1943, 1946, 1951, 1952 and 1955. In 1950 the Whitney Museum of American Art organised a retrospective exhibition which travelled to Boston and Detroit. In 1953 Hopper served on the editorial committee for Reality: A Journal
of Artists’ Opinions, a magazine published by representational artists. Retrospective exhibitions were held at the Arizona Art Gallery in 1963, and 1964 another major retrospective, organised by the Whitney Museum of American Art, was exhibited in New York, Chicago and Detroit. On 15 May 1967 Edward Hopper died in New York.
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