Edward Hopper :: Early Sunday Morning, 1930

EDWARD HOPPER
Early Sunday Morning
1930

Header Photo: Low resolution detail from the majestic still silence of Early Sunday Morning (1930) by Edward Hopper.

Painting Details

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All images © Estate of Edward Hopper.

Type: Oil on canvas
Canvas Size: 88.9 x 152.4 cm
Location: Collection of Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Purchased: with funds from Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney 31.426
© Estate of Edward Hopper

Hopper completed the work when he was 48 years old. He had been married 6 years.

For me, the piece has a strength to it that is totally manmade. The loneliness of the street hits you as it's as if the viewer is across the street looking at the empty buildings. You are there and yet no-one else is.

The picture is a prime example of how important the reproduction process with artworks actually is. I have seen it reproced in books and books and sometimes it feels slightly sinister as some reproductions are a lot darker than others. It gives the picture a whole different feel when the reproduction is darker as the downstairs windows almost merge into a whole black emptiness whereas lighter reproductions give each window its own identity, which is how, I'm sure, Hopper wanted it.

Random Hopper Fact
From 1908 onwards until the day he died, his studio was on the top floor of 3 Washington Square North, New York.

What Else Happened to Hopper in 1930?
He and his wife rented “Bird Cage Cottage”, the house of Burly Cobb, in South Truro, Massachusetts on Cape Cod. The Hoppers bought land in South Truro but didn't start building a house there until 1933.

Where Is The Painting Now?
Collection of Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Edward Hopper exhibition posters @ ebay.com (direct link to exhibition posters) - they do come onto the market from time to time and usually look out of this world - imagine one framed on your wall!

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P A I N T I N G

Early Sunday Morning uses a divide: here the street is the boundary, and we are looking across it to the houses on the other side. The facades pick up the reds, greens and yellows of Railroad Sunset, and, as if to establish a kind of symmetry between the two paintings, Hopper has introduced a striking vertical (the barber-shop candy-stripe pole) into the right- hand side of the later work, to match the signal-box in the left of the railway scene. Whereas the earlier picture emphasized flowing landscape contours, though, the dominant shapes in Early Sunday Morning are manmade and geometrical.

Hopper has included within the picture a telltale sign that this construction is a purely artificial affair devised by the artist: at right, the colourful facades that dominate the picture are dwarfed by a towering dark building, thus reminding us that the view presented by the painter is a deliberately selected and cropped sub-part of the available architectural scene. This is a reminder that recurs in other pictures Hopper painted of houses, level crossings and towers. Again and again he signals that the chosen view is merely part of a larger whole.

Source: Edward Hopper - Taschen: Basic Art Album Series Book

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As I said above, Early Sunday morning changes dependant on how dark the reproduction is. See for yourself below. I tend to enjoy the most the prints where the colours are not turned up to their max. but also not too dark. Somewhere in the middle like the Whitney print below.

Below are just a few examples of these reproductions.

Many can be obtained via ebay.com (direct link to posters) - just checked and a bigger selection than I have seen anywhere else.

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Edward Hopper Early Sunday Morning Fine Art Prints - various sizes, on canvas and on paper (direct link to prints @ ebay.com)