The Lighter Side of Edward Hopper

He is best known for oil paintings of gritty urban loneliness, such as “Nighthawks” (1942), the moody depiction of people in an all-night diner, but Edward Hopper (1882-1967) was first recognized for far different work: timeless watercolor landscapes. Now, for the first time in 40 years, the Smithsonian Institution is mounting a major exhibition of the American master’s early works.

“Edward Hopper: The Watercolors” opened this weekend and will run through Jan. 3, 2000, at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C. It presents artworks, gathered from 33 museums and private collectors, that Hopper created between 1923 and the mid-1940s.

It was in 1923, after being frustrated in his career as an illustrator in New York, that the artist, then in his 40s, began working in watercolors while vacationing in Gloucester, Mass. There he painted lighthouses, gabled Victorian houses and beach scenes. He also did hundreds of watercolors on later trips to Cape Cod, Mass.; Charleston, S.C.; and Mexico through 1946.

The watercolors, notes museum director Elizabeth Broun, “reveal a more spontaneous Hopper who was moved by the thematic possibilities of simple houses and expansive skies.”

The museum is open 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily. Admission is free. Information: telephone (202) 633-8998.