Beverly Hills

When Edward Hopper died in 1967, he left his estate to his wife, Jo, the model for many of the women in his paintings. Upon her death, Hopper’s works went to the Whitney Museum of American Art. But the curators who came to collect them inadvertently left behind about 100 drawings--a serendipity for Hopper’s neighbor, who inherited the house and its contents. They make up part of the present exhibition.

Among them were sketches Hopper made during the last few decades of his life--records of ideas pondered, revised and thrown away in the process of planning his paintings. The most interesting studies show how the spatial treatment of a painting evolved, strengthening the relationship of the figures to each other and organizing the great empty spaces of architecture that enclose or buttress these lonely souls.

“High Noon” (1949) is a painting of a blond woman in a provocative open gown who stands in the doorway of a blindingly white house. The demure garment she clutches in a preliminary charcoal figure study, however, would pass muster at a tea party. A rough crayon sketch shows the house cluttered with extraneous windows and not quite pulled around to its ultimate, commanding position within the rectangle of the canvas.

In a study for “Summer in the City” (1949), the mood of torpid stillness and brooding wakefulness awaits further refinements in the composition. Hopper is still working out the position of a man sleeping nude, and a woman sitting on the edge of the bed hasn’t yet crossed her arms.

Some studies were direct observations--like the sketch of Jo leaning forward with her weight on her hands, which would become the image of a woman peering intently out of a bay window in “Cape Cod Morning” (1950). Others, like 10 drawings of scudding sailboats for “The Lee Shore” (1941), were remembered images that Hopper drew in the studio.

The earliest sheets on view (from another private collection) are pencil drawings from the nude that Hopper made as an art student in his late teens and early 20s. The striking thing about some of these sketches is not so much Hopper’s facility in academic drawing but the way he finds personality revealed by posture. In the paintings, the fussy details drop out, leaving the evocative power of stance and gesture. (Louis Newman Gallery, 322 N. Beverly Drive, to Sept. 18.)