Edward Hopper Notecard Folio

With its often bold but always contemplative quality, its evocation of solitude, and its masterly attention to the effects of oblique sunlight, Edward Hopper’s work is revered as an existential record of twentieth-century America.

But, like many young artists of his generation, Hopper (1882-1967) visited France—three times—in the century’s first decade, finding inspiration and excitement in the galleries and raffish neighborhoods of Paris. For a time after his return to America, Hopper’s art appeared to be taking two courses—one influenced by his admiration of the French Impressionists, the other a nascent tendency toward the style and subjects that would make him the century’s preeminent painter of land- and cityscapes.

A 1907 letter to his mother gives a little background to Soir Bleu, making it clear that full-dress clowns were not an everyday sight in Hopper’s Paris: the painting may depict the evening of the springtime fete Mi-Careme, when fancy dress and eccentric behavior were not uncommon.

Le Bistro or The Wine Shop, is a reminiscence of France that points toward Hopper’s better-known interest, with its big sky, landscape awash in daylight, and—in the foreground, but still off in a corner—a couple, perhaps connecting or failing to connect. He would return to these subjects throughout his long and brilliant career.