HOPPER, Edward

 American (1882 – 1967)

East Side Interior, 1922

Levin 85. Etching with drypoint on wove paper, full margins.
Edition of 100.  Signed in pencil.

8 x 10 inches  | 20.3 x 25.4 cm

SOLD

Selected as Collector’s Choice at the London Original Print Fair by Catherine Daunt, the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. “A young woman takes a break from her sewing to watch the world outside her window. Perhaps her baby is asleep in the carriage beside her and this is a rare moment of calm. Hopper had been focused on etching for several years when he made this print and he received two awards for his printmaking the following year.”

A rich impression with velvety blacks, in dramatic contrast to the white paper.

The Whitney Museum, which received a large portion of Hopper’s artwork and anecdotal writings from his widow, described the etching as follows:
In East Side Interior, a young mother with a baby carriage sits at a sewing machine and gazes out the window. Hopper used the stark light from the window to animate the surfaces of the interior space and imbue the scene with dramatic tension. In 1956, Hopper wrote about the source of this etching as “. . . memories of glimpses of rooms seen from the streets in the eastside in my walks in that part of the city. No implication was intended with any ideology concerning the poor and oppressed. The interior itself was my main interest—simply a piece of New York, the city that interests me so much. . .”  Hopper’s studio was located at 3 Washington Square North New York, NY.