Sheldon Treasures
Edward Hopper and His Contemporaries
August 18–December 21, 2023
Sheldon Treasures Edward Hopper and His Contemporaries
[Room in New York] had been in my mind a long time before I painted it. It was suggested by glimpses of lighted interiors seen as I walked along the city streets at night . . . it is no particular street or house, but is rather a synthesis of many impressions.
—Edward Hopper, 1935
Once Edward Hopper settled into the Washington Square neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in 1913, he began to regularly paint and sketch the city around him. From the architectural details of rowhouses and rooftops to voyeuristic views of people’s interior spaces, Hopper was inspired by the near constant visual stimulation of New York City. His mature works were often the products of his imagination, or what he called “improvised,” and blended fragments of the people and places he sketched. His painting Room in New York effectively conveys feelings of isolation, vulnerability, and exposure—all symptoms of living in urban spaces. For Hopper, windows set the stage for countless “plays” expressed in paint. Through his constructed compositions and anonymous characters, he created uncanny scenes steeped in contemplation, mystery, and suggestion.
This exhibition presents Room in New York alongside works that contextualize Hopper’s history and role among the early twentieth-century artists who shaped modern American art. It also highlights New York as a place where artists were inspired by the city’s residents and its dense, urban landscape to push the limits of subject matter and representation.
Exhibition support is provided by Rhonda Seacrest, Speedway Properties, and Donna Woods and Jon Hinrichs.
Edward Hopper in his studio, New York, 1950. Photograph by George Platt Lynes. The Sanborn Hopper Archive at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Frances Mulhall Achilles Library and Archives, New York; gift of the Arthayer R. Sanborn Hopper Collection Trust, EJHA.0914. Digital image © Whitney Museum of American Art / Licensed by Scala / Art Resource, NY.can be traced to events and organizations contributing to the generative and experimental atmosphere at the time. One such event was the Armory Show of 1913, which brought more than 1,300 works of art by more than three hundred contemporary American and European artists together in one large exhibition space and introduced American audiences to European avant-garde movements including fauvism, cubism, and futurism.
Art schools and clubs that encouraged creative exchange and training also emerged at this time, such as the New York School of Art, which Hopper attended for six years; the Art Students League; and the Whitney Studio Club. Finally, advancements in technology and architecture led to the rise of skyscrapers and the proliferation of electricity, which altered New York’s landscape and its residents’ nocturnal activities.
The colored dots on the maps correspond to places and events that were significant to Edward Hopper and his New York contemporaries. Click on the dots on the Manhattan map or on the Brooklyn map to learn more about each location.
MANHATTANNew York City’s burgeoning modern art scene in the early twentieth centuryBROOKLYN
57 West 57 th Street
From 1900 to 1906, Edward Hopper attended the New York School of Art—founded by William Merritt Chase and with artists Robert Henri and Kenneth Hays Miller as instructors—at 57 West 57th Street. Hopper’s student cohort included George Bellows, Rockwell Kent, and Patrick Henry Bruce. He also met Guy Pène du Bois at the school, and the two became lifelong friends. In 1924, Pène du Bois was with Hopper the day he married artist Josephine Nivison.
LEFT: Guy Pène du Bois, Edward Hopper 1919. Fabricated chalk on paper, sheet: 21 × 16 in (53.3 × 40.6 cm). Josephine N. Hopper Bequest. Inv.: 70.979. Digital image © Whitney Museum of American Art / Licensed by Scala / Art Resource, NY.
RIGHT: Edward Hopper, Guy du Bois 1919. Fabricated chalk on paper, sheet: 21 × 16 in (53.3 × 40.6 cm). Josephine N. Hopper Bequest. Inv.: 70.907. Digital image © Whitney Museum of American Art / Licensed by Scala / Art Resource, NY.
Edward Hopper (seated in the foreground) in a figure drawing class taught by Robert Henri, New York School of Art, 1903. Frances Mulhall Achilles Library and Archives, Sanborn Hopper Archive, gift of the Arthayer R. Sanborn Hopper Collection Trust. Inv.: EJHA.907. Digital image © Whitney Museum of American Art / Licensed by Scala / Art Resource, NY.
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The Shelton Hotel, New York, circa 1924. Museum of the City of New York.
Alfred Stieglitz, From the Shelton Looking North 1927. Gelatin silver print, 4 1/2 × 3 1/2 in (11.4 × 8.9 cm). The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 84.XM.914.1.
1925, Georgia O’Keeffe and photographer Alfred Stieglitz moved to the new Shelton Hotel, a 34-story building in Midtown thought to be the tallest hotel in the world at that time. Both artists were inspired by the unobstructed views of the city from their 30th-floor apartment.
525 Lexington Avenue
The Armory Show, officially titled the International Exhibition of Modern Art , took place at the 69th Regiment Armory on 25th Street and Lexington Avenue from February 17 to March 15, 1913. The sprawling exhibition featured more than three hundred artists from Europe and the United States and highlighted modern advances in visual art. The two dozen members of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors—among them Walt Kuhn, Henry Fitch Taylor, Elmer MacRae, and Jerome Myers—organized the show, which included works by Kuhn, Hopper, Guy Pène du Bois, and Joseph Stella. Hopper sold Sailing (1911) at the Armory Show, making it his first painting sale.
The exhibition subsequently traveled to Chicago and Boston and was visited by more than 250,000 people. Audiences found the cubist and futurist works in the show shocking and jarring, and reviews of the exhibition in local newspapers often included cartoons ridiculing the art on view. 25 th Street and Lexington Avenue
Overhead installation view of Gallery A at the Armory Show, 1913. Walt Kuhn Family papers and Armory Show records, 1859–1984. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Alek Sass, “Nobody Who Has Been Drinking is Let in to See This Show.” New York World, February 17, 1913.
You can never find anyone like the American burlesque girl . . . She is unique. She is Americana.
—Walt Kuhn, 1928
Shortly after the Armory Show, Walt Kuhn began portraying showgirls and circus performers in his paintings. In his downtown studio, he had models wear burlesque costumes and pose as if relaxing backstage between performances. Kuhn sought to depict “buckeye,” or low-brow, American subject matter and was partly inspired by years of working as an artistic director in the theater.
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Walt Kuhn with models in his studio at 112 East 18th Street, January 1948. Photo by George Karger. Walt Kuhn Family papers and Armory Show records, 1859–1984. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
In 1939, Edward Hopper was a jury member for the prestigious 37th Carnegie International of Paintings, which awarded its second prize to Yasuo Kuniyoshi. In 1944, Kuniyoshi’s Room 110 , in Sheldon’s collection, won first prize.
Both Hopper and Kuniyoshi represented the United States at the 26th Venice Biennale in 1952, along with Alexander Calder and Stuart Davis. Kuniyoshi’s inclusion was ironic considering he had not been granted American citizenship, despite the fact that he had been living in United States for more than forty-five years.
For over five decades, Edward and Josephine Hopper lived on the top floor of a four-story apartment building in New York’s Washington Square. He was often inspired by the low-rise buildings of his neighborhood even as the city grew vertically around it.
Washington Square
Edward Hopper, Town Square (Washington Square and Judson Tower) 1932. Charcoal on paper, 12 × 19 in (30.48 × 48.26 cm). University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Anna R. and Frank M. Hall Charitable Trust, H-604.1960.
Aerial view of the Washington Square Arch in New York City, circa 1947. Photo by Earl Leaf, Michael Ochs Archives, Getty Images.
Arriving at [Coney Island] I was instantly struck by the dazzling array of lights. It seemed as if they were in conflict. I was struck with the thought that here was what I had been unconsciously seeking for many years.
Luna Park, an amusement park illuminated with more than 200,000 lightbulbs, opened on Coney Island’s boardwalk in Brooklyn in 1903. Stella visited it in 1913, and his impression of the overwhelming combination of attractions, crowds, and flashing lights at night inspired several works.
—Joseph Stella, 1924
Brilliant Luna Park at night—Coney Island, New York’s great pleasure resort. Luna Park, Coney Island, New York, circa 1903. Underwood & Underwood Publishers.
Coney Island, Brooklyn
EDWARD HOPPER
Nyack, NY 1882–New York, NY 1967
Room in New York Oil on canvas, 1932
University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Anna R. and Frank M. Hall Charitable Trust
H-166.1936
Edward Hopper moved to New York City from his hometown of Nyack, New York, at the beginning of the twentieth century. After training in commercial art and attending the New York School of Art, he made a living as an illustrator for magazines before achieving success as a printmaker and fine artist. Hopper depicted the everyday lives of city dwellers in much of his work, often capturing the anonymity and isolation of modern urban living. In many important canvases painted between 1926 and 1932, including Room in New York , Hopper placed single figures or couples in compositions that curator Judith Butler has described as “[evoking] a hermetically sealed world of emotion.”
WALT KUHN
New York, NY 1877–White Plains, NY 1949
Beryl
Oil on canvas, 1924
University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Bequest of Mary Riepma Ross through the University of Nebraska Foundation
U-6334.2013
An avid promoter of early modern art, Walt Kuhn was a wellknown painter, cartoonist, sculptor, printmaker, and educator. He grew up in Brooklyn and traveled to Europe in 1901 for formal art training, though upon his return to New York he derided European art and sought to define American art during the nationalist interwar period. Kuhn also directed and produced vaudeville shows and held a lifelong interest in the circus. He is probably best known for his simple and riveting portraits of showgirls and circus performers, such as Beryl .
YASUO KUNIYOSHI
Okayama, Japan 1889–New York, NY 1953
Fruit on Table Oil on canvas, 1932
Nebraska Art Association
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Waugh
N-132.1961
By the 1930s, the Japanese-born artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi began to paint from real life while employing imaginative, offkilter compositions that meld Japanese and American folkart traditions. After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Kuniyoshi’s immigration status, along with that of other Japanese-born people living in the United States, changed to “enemy alien.” His financial assets were frozen, he was subject to a strict curfew, and was eventually put under house arrest. Due to anti-Asian naturalization laws, Kuniyoshi never became a US citizen even after residing in the country for more than forty-five years.
GEORGIA O’KEEFFE
Sun Prairie, WI 1887–Santa Fe, NM 1986
New York, Night Oil on canvas, 1928–1929
Nebraska Art Association
Thomas C. Woods Memorial N-107.1958
Lexington Avenue looked, in the night, like a very tall thin bottle with colored things going up and down inside it.
—Georgia O’KeeffeConsidered one of the most stylistically recognizable and important artists of the twentieth century, Georgia O’Keeffe is best known for her paintings of flowers and the landscape of New Mexico, where she lived and worked for most of her life. Prior to relocating to the American Southwest, O’Keeffe and her husband, the photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz, took up residence in New York City in the three-year-old Shelton Hotel in 1925. Both artists drew inspiration from their views of the city from the 30th floor. Most notable in this painting is the Beverly Hotel, identifiable by its distinctive rosette window.
GUY PÈNE DU BOIS
New York, NY 1884–Boston, MA 1958
The Beach
Triptych: oil on panel, 1924
University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Anna R. and Frank M. Hall Charitable Trust
H-706.A-C.1961
Guy Pène du Bois explored the sexual politics and performance of social status in the early twentieth century, often portraying fashionable couples that frequented the city’s concert halls, galleries, and restaurants. Aside from being an artist and teacher, Pène du Bois was also an art critic who wrote primarily about the urban realists—contemporaries of his who included his friend Edward Hopper.
The Beach is set in the small town of Westport, Connecticut, where Pène du Bois had moved his family—a relatively affordable bohemia at the time and a place frequented by many cultured Manhattanites during the summer.
JOSEPH STELLA
Muro Lucano, Italy 1877–New York, NY 1946
Battle of Lights, Coney Island
Oil on canvas, 1913–1914
University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Anna R. and Frank M. Hall Charitable Trust
H-639.1960
After immigrating to New York from Italy at the end of the nineteenth century, Joseph Stella began studying with urban realist artists at the Art Students League and the New York School of Art. In 1911, he traveled to Paris, where he encountered the work of Italian futurist artists, who were attempting to convey the mechanization and speed of modern life using color and fractured forms. After returning to New York two years later, Stella embarked on a series of works devoted to Coney Island.
