Edward Hopper

A rich exhibition of Edward Hopper’s early work and that of his fellow painters of the Ash Can School is a rewarding look at the beauty and transient character of the urban landscape. Over 30 artists who were working in New York during the early decades of the 20th Century, and who represent the Ash Can School, including George Luks, John Sloan, Everett Shin and George Bellows, as well as Hopper--represented by a selection of early works--are in this exhibition of 50 paintings organized by the Whitney Museum of Modern Art. Many of these artists were students of Robert Henri, who is known for his loose brushstrokes and deep, luminous colors. Henri encouraged his students to look at the urban scene with a new realism shorn of the stiff trappings of academic style. The artists’ portrayals of the endlessly fascinating vistas of a vibrant and bustling city earned them such contemporary labels as the “Apostles of Ugliness” and the “Ash Can School.”

For anyone who is familiar with the taut beauty of Hopper’s more famous later work, the early work is a surprise and revelation. Statue at Park Entrance is an impressionistic scene of swirling brushstrokes and dramatic darks and lights. The figures are mere daubs of paint to balance out the composition; but his familiar and apparently innate sense of isolation and hispreference for an urban scene devoid of people is found even in his early work. This scene shows a masterful sense of abstraction and the fluid modeling that would become much more refined as his style progressed.

John Sloan’s marvelous slice of life painting, Backyards, Greenwich Village owes much to the American Impressionists. Cropped at the window where a small girl peers out, the scene is a touching vignette of inner city life with activity crammed into every nook and cranny. Two small children make a snowman, two cats frolic in the snow, while lines of laundry swing in the wind. Sloan’s palette glows with an inner light as pale yellow walls are juxtaposed with white snow, and then are topped with the delicate pink bricks of the tenement building. Tiny brilliant accents of red and black only make the pale colors more luminous.

Of note is a superb Sloan, Sixth Avenue Elevated at Third Street, that encapsulates the bustle and beauty of a great city at night. Under the elevated train a whole spectrum of city life is played out: pedestrians run to catch a show, walk under the street lamps and meet each other. Above the train, the city lights further illuminate a rich sky of brilliant turquoise highlighted with vivid pink tints. The entire painting is busy, with many complex compositional elements, but a unified portrait of a city that never sleeps emerges.

"EDWARD HOPPER AND URBAN REALISM"