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In Focus: Works of Art
Edward Hopper's Soir Bleu
by GAIL S. MYHRE
August 17, 2009
Edward Hopper (1882-1967) needs no introduction. His images are iconic and deeply embedded in our collective conscience. Parodies of Nighthawks (1942), probably the artist's most familiar work, are populated with dead Hollywood stars, a group of rabbits, Santa and his reindeer, among others. We retain an equal if somewhat less colloquial familiarity with Hopper's warm, autumnal landscapes – red brick row houses lit by the sun, rustic gas stations at country roadsides.
Soir Bleu (1914), an oil on canvas, was painted during the latter half of the decade Hopper spent in Paris (1906-16). This period, at the very beginning of his career, witnessed the early development of the artist’s characteristic vision. The strong influence Hopper absorbed from the French Impressionists is especially clear here. It was during his time in Paris that Hopper’s trademark warm palette was developed.
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Edward Hopper (American, 1882-1967). Soir Bleu (1914). Oil on canvas. 91.44 x 182.88 cm (36 x 72 in.). Whitney Museum of American Art. © Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper. Photograph by Geoffrey Clements. |
Having arrived in Paris after six years of study at the New York School of Art, Hopper was not particularly affected by the city's burgeoning Modernist movement. The canvases from his early period are small and dark; they evoke a sort of wintry feeling. We see in the young Hopper's earliest works the blending of Impressionism with the realism so strongly exhibited in his later efforts, as well as his focus on architectural forms which so notably overrode his interest in portrait study.
We can imagine the character of Paris gradually seeping into Hopper’s consciousness as we observe his palette brightening considerably during the decade he spent there. From those small early works, Hopper’s colors literally pass into springtime. He begins to use a warmer palette to describe the wonderful quality of light which caused so many artists to fall in love with Paris. His landscapes become more open and expansive, his canvases larger.
Hopper was more interested in the placement of form and mass than he was in the depiction of human emotion. His landscapes seem more animated than his human figures. Hopper's portraits invariably show a certain emotional distance. His subjects do not generally address the viewer, but always seem to look away, disinterested.
Soir Bleu is one of Hopper’s few compositions that draws attention to people rather than place. Its color palette, strikingly transitional, vacillates between the dark greys of the New York art student and the airy light and color of the Parisian painter. The canvas' grand scale is indicative of the French city's effect on his artistic sensibilities.
The painting's figures appear stiff, their arrangement artificial. The bourgeois couple, the military officer in formal dress, the intellectual in beard and beret, and the clown in traditional attire, each a specific Parisian urban type, have as little to do with each other as with the viewer. A single female addresses the viewer directly and she is the farthest from us in space, her features masked and unreadable. Only from her countenance do we gain a sense of the woman's thoughts – haughty and distant. Though these people take their evening refreshment together, their isolation from one another is complete and absolute.
Soir Bleu's contrasting warm, inviting palette and blank, unanimated faces provide a certain artistic tension in Hopper’s work. Indeed, this enigmatic quality may possibly provide a basis for his contemporary popularity. As with Mona Lisa’s smile, we find ourselves always wondering about what are they thinking. So it is with this strangely disquieting piece.
The painting Soir Bleu was on view in Holiday in Reality: Edward Hopper (June 29-December 3, 2006) during the Whitney Museum of American Art's 75th anniversary celebrations. No scholarly publication was produced for the exhibition. Gail Levin's catalogue raisonné of Hopper’s work was published by the Whitney in 1995. The artist and the museum have a long-standing association. His first solo exhibition was at the Whitney Studio Club (the museum's precursor) in 1920. The Whitney is home to the world's largest collection of Edward Hopper's work.