Edward Hopper's Accomplishments

Edward Hopper was born on July 22, 1882 in Nyack, New York to a moderately wealthy middle-class family. In school Hopper was a good student and showed talent for drawing by as young as age five. His parents encouraged him to pursue his artistic talents and kept him supplied with artistic supplies and in 1895 he created the first signed oil painting of his extensive art career, Rowboat in Rocky Cove. In high school he aspired to become a naval architect, but later decided to follow a career in the art market. Hopper began his art studies and soon transferred to the New York School of Art and Design where he studied for several years. At the urging of his parents Hopper studied courses in commercial art in order to have a reliable means

He displayed his various work in a variety of group shows in most notably the Armory Show in 1913. Although he composed mostly oil paintings he also become skilled at the practice of etching, which brought him even more success. He began living in the Greenwich Village neighborhood, and spent much of his summers in New England, a practice that became a lifelong pattern for him. In 1920 he held his first single exhibit at the Whitney Studio Club where he displayed sixteen of his paintings. Although none of the paintings were sold it was a major achievement in Hopper's career. Within the span of a few short years Hopper found himself to be far more prosperous and prominent as an artist. His second single exhibit, which was held at the Rehn Gallery in New York, turned out to be an enormous success when every painting on display was sold. In 1930 his painting, House by the Railroad, was the first work to be acquisitioned by the newly founded Museum of Modern Art. In the meantime Hopper's personal life also moved forward when in 1923, he married fellow artist Josephine Nivison. She would quickly become an integral part to the creation of his art as she was the model on which most of his female figures were based. She also encouraged him to continue his work on watercolor paintings. In addition to all this she also kept thorough records on every one of his completed paintings, sales of

In many of the works that Hopper created during this period, many of the scenes, the common locations, and nearby attractions which they visited, were often seen in the art forms that he created during his career. He also started to travel further out, and visited regions from Vermont out to Charleston, in order to add more new points of interest to his collection, and to broaden the works and the locations which he would include in many of the images that he created over the course of his