Edward Hopper [Peintre]

Hopper and his wife began to spend their summers in South Truro, on Cape Cod in 1930, eventually building a house of the artist’s own design there in 1934. Although there had been important artistic communities for decades on Cape Cod, Provincetown in particular, South Truro was more rural and isolated. Solitary and introspective by nature, Hopper found the quietude of South Truro restorative. They rented a cottage they nicknamed “Bird Cage Cottage,” which was perched on a hill overlooking the farm of the local postmaster A. B. Burleigh Cobb, from whom they rented the house. Between 1930 and 1933, Hopper made a series of paintings, watercolors, and drawings of the buildings and barns on the Cobb property, exploring the structures from several angles and at different times of the day. Burly Cobb’s House, South Truro and Cobb’s Barns, South Truro feature the lush, rolling hills and open, luminous skies that attracted the Hoppers to the region. Although he worked in a figurative mode, Hopper was always attentive to formal structure and abstract design in his work—an approach that is evident in the interlocking planes formed by the barn and outbuildings in these two paintings. Emblematic examples of his work, these paintings capture the strong sense of atmosphere and light as well as the empty stillness that characterize much of Hopper’s imagery. They also demonstrate Hopper’s fascination with the various forms of this country’s vernacular architecture—a subject he would return to again and again, resulting in some of the most enduring images of American art.

NEW YORK, NY.- On May 21, as the star lot of its sale of American Art, Christie’s will offer Two Puritans by Edward Hopper (1882-1967). Painted in 1945 at the height of Hopper’s career, Two Puritans, one of only three canvases by the artist of that year and the only one in private hands, is estimated to bring in excess of $20 million when it appears at auction for the first time this spring. The painting has been included in nearly every major exhibition and publication on the artist and, most recently was on view in Paris at the Grand Palais, where the Hopper exhibition broke attendance records, proving that the artist has arrived on an international stage.

Elizabeth Beaman, Head of American Art, states; “Edward Hopper's masterwork Two Puritans can be considered at once an intimate and revealing portrait of the artist and his wife, as well as a testament to his dogged dedication to realism in the face of a changing visual world that increasingly championed abstraction. We are privileged to offer this seminal work, which has never appeared at auction before.”

Hopper's oeuvre is defined by what is a first glance a seemingly mundane, American subject yet in each canvas, and perhaps most poignantly in Two Puritans, a complex psychological subtext lies just beneath the surface, betraying the simplicity of the scene. The frisson created in this disconnect between subject and meaning defines his best work and imbues his compositions with an almost haunting permanence, leaving an indelible mark on the mind's eye. This ability to distill time, to freeze a single moment in perpetuity, cemented his legacy and inspired future generations of artists.

Edward Hopper’s choice and earnest representation of commonplace subject matter in works such as Two Puritans set the artist apart from his contemporaries and allowed him to create a new and uniquely American iconography. In Two Puritans and throughout his career, Hopper painted aspects of America that few other artists addressed. He portrayed unromantic visions of life in a broad and increasingly modern style. While Hopper's paintings have formal qualities in common with other Modernists, his art remained steadfastly realist.

EDWARD HOPPER | A MARKET LEADER
In recent seasons, prices for Hopper’s paintings have soared at auction, driven by renewed demand for masterpiece-quality works. In October 2013, East Wind Over Weehawken sold for $40,485,000 setting a new world auction record for the artist and in November of 2012, October on Cape Cod sold via Christie’s LIVE™ for $9.6 million, setting the world record for an item sold online at any international auction house.

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NEW YORK, NY.- Edward Hopper first painted Gloucester during a summer spent in the Massachusetts fishing town and artist’s haven in 1912. He returned to the area in the summer of 1924 and again in 1926 and 1928, before he began summering in Truro, on Cape Cod, in 1930. During his time spent in Gloucester and other parts of New England, Hopper was inspired by the towns, landscapes, and coast lines that surrounded him and portrayed these everyday scenes in his realist style with subtle, psycho-social undertones.

Watercolor became an important media for Hopper beginning in 1923, and the translucent quality of the paint allowed him to better capture the effect of sunlight in his works. While many of his watercolors are executed in a very precise, restrained style, the present example is lose and spontaneous. The closely cropped composition allows Hopper to explore the movement of the trees blowing in the wind and the dramatic variations of light and shadow in the landscape. Thin washes of paint in the foreground contrast with the opaque pigment of the foliage, varying from deep blues to light greens, which give the trees dimension and demonstrate the artist’s interest in the effects of sunlight. The rich and varying tonalities and the larger composition void of figures anticipate the poignant isolation that would underlie much of Hopper's subsequent work.

The present work is inventoried in the artist's record book and illustrated in several catalogues, most notably those authored by the preeminent Hopper expert, Gail Levin. Please see additional images, as well as exhibition history, literature and provenance in the lot.

"This early and thoughtful watercolor, painted during Hopper's vacationing in Gloucester, Massachusetts, marks a watershed moment in his career, when Hopper exhibited sixteen watercolors at a solo exhibition at Frank K. M. Rehn New York gallery. Every single work sold, and Hopper never looked back to illustration and printmaking to sustain him." says Conner Williams, Senior Specialist, Contemporary Art and Prints, at artnet Auctions.

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