- 9
Edward Hopper 1882 - 1967
Estimate
120,000 - 180,000 USD
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Description
- Edward Hopper
- Dune at Truro
- signed Edward Hopper and inscribed Cape Cod (lower right)
- watercolor and pencil on paper
- 14 by 20 inches
- (35.6 by 50.8 cm)
- Executed in 1930.
Provenance
Charlotte & John Parkinson III, New York, 1958
By descent (sold: Christie's, New York, May 21, 2008, lot 14, illustrated)
Acquired by the present owner at the above sale
By descent (sold: Christie's, New York, May 21, 2008, lot 14, illustrated)
Acquired by the present owner at the above sale
Literature
Edward Hopper, Record Book I, pp. 72, 74
Gail Levin, Edward Hopper: A Catalogue Raisonné. The Watercolors, New York, 1995, vol. II, no. W-256, illustrated in color p. 225
Gail Levin, The Complete Watercolors of Edward Hopper, New York, 2001, no. W-256, illustrated p. 225
Gail Levin, Edward Hopper: A Catalogue Raisonné. The Watercolors, New York, 1995, vol. II, no. W-256, illustrated in color p. 225
Gail Levin, The Complete Watercolors of Edward Hopper, New York, 2001, no. W-256, illustrated p. 225
Catalogue Note
After 1930, Edward Hopper and his wife, Jo, began spending at least three months of every year on Cape Cod, eventually building a house in South Truro. The artist later described his attraction to the Cape in a 1962 interview: “I chose to live here because it has a longer summer season. I like Maine very much, but it gets so cold in the fall. There’s something soft about Cape Cod that doesn’t appeal to me too much. But there’s a beautiful light there—very luminous—perhaps because it’s so far out to sea; an island almost” (Katherine Kuh, The Artist's Voice: Talks with Seventeen Modern Artists, New York, 1962, p. 134).
The artist was also drawn to the landscape around Truro, describing in a letter to his friend Clarence K. Chatteron the, “Fine big hills of sand, a desert on a small scale with fine dune formations, a very open almost treeless country—I think you would like it” (Gail Levin, Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography, New York, 1997, p. 230). Dune at Truro, which Hopper executed during his first summer on the Cape, reveals the artist's interest in capturing the dazzling effects of the light on the landscape. Hopper first began painting seriously with watercolor in 1923 during a summer he spent in Gloucester, Massachusetts. The translucency of the watercolor medium, combined with the spontaneity required in execution, proved to be ideally suited to capturing the luminosity that the artist sought—a quality that became a hallmark of his work. In the present work Hopper renders one of Truro’s sandy dunes with thin washes of watercolor, while strokes of more densely applied pigment create the details of scrubby foliage and windblown grass, all of which contribute to the rich and painterly surface of the work.
The artist was also drawn to the landscape around Truro, describing in a letter to his friend Clarence K. Chatteron the, “Fine big hills of sand, a desert on a small scale with fine dune formations, a very open almost treeless country—I think you would like it” (Gail Levin, Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography, New York, 1997, p. 230). Dune at Truro, which Hopper executed during his first summer on the Cape, reveals the artist's interest in capturing the dazzling effects of the light on the landscape. Hopper first began painting seriously with watercolor in 1923 during a summer he spent in Gloucester, Massachusetts. The translucency of the watercolor medium, combined with the spontaneity required in execution, proved to be ideally suited to capturing the luminosity that the artist sought—a quality that became a hallmark of his work. In the present work Hopper renders one of Truro’s sandy dunes with thin washes of watercolor, while strokes of more densely applied pigment create the details of scrubby foliage and windblown grass, all of which contribute to the rich and painterly surface of the work.