Hopper's Door

Hopper's Door to the Sea, oil on masonite, 16" x 14", Steven Rhude

 

 

Ever since I read Gail Levin's bio on Edward Hopper, I've had mixed feelings about his art. I realise ones art should stand alone and the separation of church and state is a reasonable maxim when thinking of the relationship between two married artists, as was the case with Jo and Edward Hopper. However, painting is never so compartmentalised as that, and neither are people. In Jo's case freedom equated with latitude - the mobile kind we take for granted today. In the 1950's that latitude came in the form of a car.

Jo Hopper was fiercely independent and realised that driving an automobile (as it was called back then) gave one a kind of liberty for all sorts of things, especially from the confines of a Truro summer retreat and an over bearing husband.

"Although occupied with painting, Jo renewed her campaign to drive. Harking back to her strongest argument, she again threatened to sell the house unless Edward let her practise: "I was tired of being prisoner on this hill 2 miles from a bus & such 2 miles of deep sand & long hills to trudge over on foot." When he did allow her to drive back from Provincetown, he let her go only ten or fifteen miles per hour." [1]

At the time Rooms by the Sea was painted, it was believed Hopper suffered from lethargy, and saw a physician. Subsequently from Jo Hopper: "Six days later, he was "struggling to get new canvas started - having such a bad time. It is an open door with a sea outside & strong pattern of light inside house. Looks like only a diagram as yet." [2]

History reports that the canvas improved as it diverged from the reality of the actual house. Steps were removed and a horizon was reinstated in the final version. Like much of Hopper's work, departure plays a role in the philosophical underpinnings of his visual observation. Hopper seeking liberty through the motif of the western door, Jo, from access to the western automobile. Later on at Christmas, Hopper's gift to Jo was Arthur Rimbaud's poetry in French inscribed: "La petite chatte qui decouvre ses griffes presque tous les jours. Joyeux Noel, 1951 ("to the little cat who bares her claws almost every day")

[1] [2] Edward Hopper, An Intimate Biography, Gail Levin pg. 442

Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS