NEW YORK, NY.- Drawing was an essential part of the creative process of the painter Edward Hopper, whose particular brand of cinematic and voyeuristic realism has given us some of the most iconic images in American art. Hopper drew constantly and relied on his drawings as essential documentation in the creation of his paintings, connecting observed reality with the one he created on the canvas.

In Portrait of Orleans, (1950), a study for a painting in the collection of the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, we see a nostalgic view of Main Street America in a depiction of a small town on Cape Cod. Hopper and his wife Jo spent summers on Cape Cod beginning in 1930, and bought a house in Truro in 1934. They would spend 40 years summering on Cape Cod. Illustrating the tension between stillness and impending motion, Orleans depicts the town from the point of view of a driver deciding whether to continue straight onto Main Street or to veer off to the right onto Route 6A.

A chronicler of life between the World Wars in America, and the onset of modern life in the post war years, Hopper was one of the first artists to use images of the automobile as a symbol of modernity and change. “To me the important thing is the sense of going on”, he said in 1948; “you know how beautiful things are when you’re traveling.”



Landscape with Automobile (Study for Road and Trees), c. 1962 shows us a group of trees, drawn with dashed and hurried charcoal marks and at the right edge a sedan, partially cut off from the drawing frame. This creates a composition that is charged with movement, both the car’s and that of the eye of the viewer who sees the implied motion of the car.

Study for Excursion into Philosophy of 1959 is a study for a painting in a private collection and shows a contemplative scene in an interior space, with geometric patches of sunlight covering the room. A man at the edge of the bed appears consumed by thought, while a woman sleeps behind him with her back turned to the viewer. In the foreground, an open book rests on the bed. According to Jo Hopper, the book was of Plato’s writings, thus suggesting the painting’s title. But it is the drawing’s understated intensity and deliberate composition that make it emblematic of Hopper’s brand of realism, always furtive and suggestive, present yet distant

On view at Jill Newhouse Gallery

4 East 81st Street
Tuesday -Friday 10-5
May 5-30, 2025

Fully illustrated digital catalogue at www.jillnewhouse.com/catalogues