Edward Hopper. Light and Dark. Gerry Souter
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students had preceded him to Paris and he used them to help him explore. Patrick Henry Bruce and his new wife were particularly helpful. They made sure he became acquainted with the impressionist painters who had broken out just twenty years earlier: Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley, Monet and Cezanne.
Pissarro he liked, Cezanne he didn’t, dismissing the painter’s work as “lacking in substance”. Bruce and other artists in residence led the initiate marching through the galleries where the paintings of these masters glowed on the walls and through the Gustave Caillebotte Collection at the Luxembourg Palace where that artist had saved paintings once condemned.
As spring arrived and rain washed away the grime from the skies and puddled the streets, Hopper noticed the sudden luminosity, the light reflected into shadows, how bright the stone buildings appeared. The small oil-on-board studies he had made in the earth colours he had brought from New York were set aside as the sun suddenly suffused his work. Into a series of 25” × 28” canvases he poured light-bathed scenes of Paris and its suburbs, and followed the Seine and nearby canals where wash boats (laundry washing) tied up for customers.
In Le Louvre et la Seine, the great repository of art shimmers in gold beyond two wash boats tethered in the Seine. Terraced lawns in Le Parc de Saint-Cloud are slabs of yellow-green pierced by up-thrusting tree trunks into a hot thick impasto sky.
The Impressionists loaded his palette with both hands when he produced Trees in Sunlight at that same Parc de Saint-Cloud location. Here his brush strokes shortened up, becoming busy dabs of alizarin, both raw and mixed with zinc white. Trees became vertical slashes and swipes of thalo green and cadmium yellow. The indoor school studies faded away as he attacked his sky-lit subjects, painting from life.
The sketchy nature of these Paris oils and watercolours seemed to bubble through the architectural geometry of Hopper’s developing style as though he was channeling the spirits of dead Impressionists. Sadly, the very “European” nature of the subject matter and its handling ran contrary to the gritty realism happening back in the United States.
By 1907 he was having a grand time, as letters from the widow Jammes revealed to Hopper’s parents. He was a fine “mama’s boy,” enjoying good wholesome fun while ignoring the slovenly Bohemian art scene. And then he met the first true love of his life. Her name was Enid Saies.
“I went to dinner at an English chapel…with a very bright Welsh girl, a student at the Sorbonne, and we derived considerable amusement from the evening’s programme, which consisted chiefly of sentimental songs with the h’s omitted.”[6]
She also boarded with the Jammes. Her parents, like Edward’s, were very religious and she, like Edward, cared little for religion. Enid was not Welsh, but her parents were English with a house in Wales. Being very bright, fluent in French and other languages and a book lover, she must have dropped into Hopper’s austere well-ordered life like a bombshell. She was also tall at 5 ft 8 in with dark brown hair and light brown, almost hazel eyes.
With her English accent, possibly spiced with a bit of a Welsh lilt, and her enjoyment of his awkward sense of humour and American habits, he became enraptured. Her studies at the Sorbonne had concluded and she was preparing to return to England in the summer. Worst of all, she had accepted the marriage proposal of a Frenchman ten years her senior.
Edward wrote to his mother that he wished to extend his trip to Paris into a tour of Europe as he was already in France. With parental assent – blindly given and not knowing his reason was the pursuit of Enid – Hopper packed and crossed the Channel to Dover and took the train to London.
There he trudged around the English capital, finding the Thames “muddy,” the city “dingy” and the culture lacking the sparkle of France. Dutifully, he climbed the steps to the National Gallery and the British Museum. He wrote home that the food could not match the quality of that served in France. But nothing could match the love he had left behind and he made one final try to change that situation.
Hopper took Enid out to dinner. He sat with her in her parents’ garden and, as she told her daughter years later, told her of his love and his desire to marry her. She remained true to her fiancé.
In the end, Hopper left London for Amsterdam, Haarlem, Berlin and Brussels on 19 July without unpacking his brushes or sketch pad. When he returned to Paris on 1 August 1907, the city had emptied because all its residents who are able to flee the August heat. And the City of Light held too many fresh memories. On 21 August he sailed for the United States, anxious to make use of his experiences and begin the campaign to make a name for himself in the world of fine art.
Later, Hopper wrote to Enid and she replied in depression over her impending marriage and reminding Edward of their great times together. “I’ve made a hash pretty generally of my life…oh, I’m so miserable…”[7] If this was a plea for Edward to come to her rescue, it fell on scorned ears. He was not used to rejection. She eventually abandoned her French suitor, married a Swede and raised four children. Back home in New York, Edward Hopper was discovering real rejection had many faces.
15. Le Bistrot or The Wine Shop, 1909. Oil on canvas,
59.4 × 72.4 cm. Whitney Museum of American Art,
New York, Josephine N. Hopper Bequest.
Turning points
“The only real influence I’ve ever had was myself.”
16. Le Pavillon de Flore in the Spring, 1907. Oil on canvas, 60 × 72.4 cm. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Josephine N. Hopper Bequest.
17. Notre-Dame de Paris, 1907. Oil on canvas, 59.7 × 73 cm. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Josephine N. Hopper Bequest.
Return, Rejection and Flight
Romantic entanglements left behind, Hopper returned from Europe energised and ready to see his paintings on gallery walls. Regardless of personal problems brought on by his reserve and quiet nature and his dismissal of what he deemed to be distractions, his work had never let him down. He had spent seven years perfecting his technique, his eye for composition and hand for execution. The explosion of light and colour he had discovered in France had jarred him away from the sombre palette of Robert Henri, who had vaulted to success following his own tour abroad. Now, it was Hopper’s turn to cash in.
Needing to become independent and remain permanently in the city, he faced the economic challenge of finding an apartment-studio and ready cash. Unfortunately only two months after Hopper stepped ashore in New York, on 16 October 1907, F. Augustus Heinze’s scheme to corner the market in United Copper stock was exposed. The exposure revealed a network of interlocking directorates that included banks, brokerage houses and trust companies. This sudden revelation of bankers and stockbrokers in collusion came on the heels of the stock market plunge early that spring. This double hit fuelled a need among bank depositors to withdraw their money until matters were sorted out. That need resulted in runs on banks across the country. Since no bank keeps 100 per cent of depositors’ cash on hand, the rush to empty bank accounts became the Bank Panic of 1907.
With the economy suddenly clapped in irons, disposable and investment income dried up. Even the wealthy snapped their purses shut, casting a jaundiced eye on investments that didn’t translate into a proven return. The art world saw sales droop, commissions cancelled and shows of “promising artists, ‘…put on hold ‘…until further notice.”
Hopper had no choice but to fall back on his skills as a commercial illustrator to earn money and maintain some semblance of independence from his family. This turn of events no doubt brought knowing smiles from the Smith-Hopper matriarchy in Nyack. He immediately sought out his pals from the art school to find wall space for his new work during this temporary set-back. In the meantime, his portfolio landed him illustration piece-work with
Edward Hopper, Letter to his Mother, 29 December 1906
Enid M. Saies to Edward Hopper, letter, Derby, England, 1907