Edward Hopper Quotes

1882–1967 United States

Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967) was an American Realist painter, best remembered for his eerily realistic depictions of solitude in contemporary American life. Sales of his prolific output were managed by his wife Josephine Hopper.

United States
Painters

Also known as: Hopper, Edward

Random Edward Hopper quote

35 quotes

It is a woman looking out to see if the weather is good enough to hang out her wash.

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

It takes a long time for an idea to strike.

Originality is neither a matter of inventiveness nor method, it is the essence of personality.

All I ever wanted to do is to paint sunlight on the side of a wall.

Comment on his 'Early Sunday Morning (1930)

Methods are transient: personality is enduring.

The whole answer is there on the canvas.

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

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

The man's the work. Something does not come out of nothing.

Ninety percent of them [artists in general] are forgotten ten minutes after they’re dead.

I do not know why I chose one subject rather than another unless I believe them to be the best synthesis of my inner experience.

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.

It is hard for me to know what to paint. It comes slowly.

Gail Levin in 'Edward Hopper - an intimate biography (1995)

I am after ME [his response on the question what he was after, in his sober painting in 1963 'Sun in an empty room'.

To me the most important thing is the sense of going on. You know how beautiful things are when you're traveling.

I am interested primarily in the vast field of experience and sensation which neither literature nor a purely plastic art deals with.

I do not believe there is another city on earth so beautiful as Paris, nor another people with such an appreciation of the beautiful as the French.

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

Notes on Painting - Edward Hopper (1933)

If this end is unattainable, so, it can be said, is perfection in any other ideal of painting or in any other of man's activities.

Notes on Painting - Edward Hopper (1933)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Edward Hopper (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.