Edward Hopper Quotes

45 Sourced Quotes

My aim in painting has always been the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impressions of nature.

Edward Hopper
It's probably a reflection of my own, if I may say, loneliness. I don't know. It could be the whole human condition.

Edward Hopper
After I took up etchings [c. 1915], my paintings seemed to crystallize.

Edward Hopper
The only quality that endures in art is a personal vision of the world. Methods are transient: personality is enduring.

Edward Hopper
I find in working always the disturbing intrusion of elements not a part of my most interested vision, and the inevitable obliteration and replacement of this vision by the work itself as it proceeds....

Edward Hopper
About his painting 'Approaching a CityWell' Hopper painted in 1946:
I've always been interested in approaching a big city in a train, and I can't exactly describe the sensations, but they're entirely human and perhaps have nothing to do with aesthetics. There is a certain fear and anxiety and a great visual interest in the things that one sees coming into a great city. I think that's about all I can say about it.

Edward Hopper
The killing of the horses [a bullfight in Madrid, he visited in June 1910] by the bull is very horrible, much more so as they have no chance to escape and are ridden up to the bull to be butchered.... the entry of the bull into the ring however is very beautiful; his surprise and the first charges he makes are very pretty.

Edward Hopper
Recognition does not mean so much, you never get it when you need it.

Edward Hopper
Everyone goes to the 'Grands-Boulevards' and let himself loose... Do not picture these in costume, they are not for the most part.... perhaps a clown with a big nose, or two girls with bare necks and short skirts.... the parade of the queens of the halls [Paris' markets] is also one of the events.... Some are pretty but look awkward in their silk dresses and crowns, particularly as the broad sun displays their defects – perhaps a neck too thin or a painted face which shows ghastly white in the sunlight.

Edward Hopper
The idea [for his painting 'Room in New York', he painted in 1932] 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 city streets at night, probably near the district where I live [Washington Square, New York] although it's no particular street or house, but is really a synthesis of many impressions.

Edward Hopper
In general it can be said that a nation's art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people.

Edward Hopper
I was always interested in architecture, but the editors [of the magazines who demanded these subjects for the illustrations of Hopper] wanted people waving with their arms.

Edward Hopper
Jo, his wife, remarked on Hopper's painting 'Cape Cod morning', 1950: 'It is a woman looking out to see if the weather is good enough to hang out her wash'. Edward Hopper reacted:
'did I say that? You're making it Norman Rockwell. From my point of view she's just looking out the window, just looking out the window'.

Edward Hopper
Well, I have a very simple method of painting. It's to paint directly on the canvas without any funny business, as it were, and I use almost pure turpentine to start with, adding oil as I go along until the medium becomes pure oil. I use as little oil as I can possibly help, and that's my method. It's very simple... Yes, linseed oil. I used to use poppy oil, but I have heard that poppy oil is given to cracking pigment too, so I use it no longer... I find linseed oil and white lead the most satisfactory mediums.

Edward Hopper
It is true that the Impressionists perhaps gave a more faithful representation of nature through their discoveries in out-of-door painting. But that they increased their statute as artists by so doing is controversial.... If the technical innovations of the Impressionists led merely to a more accurate representation of nature, it was perhaps of not much value in enlarging their powers of expression.

Edward Hopper