High Noon

About the Art

Hopper was a prominent American artist of the twentieth century. He painted quiet scenes and smallslices of life that regularly show individuals in moments of private contemplation. Unable to decipherthe internal thoughts of those pictured, his paintingsare regularly read as depictions of alienation andloneliness. As author John Updike wrote, “The silence and plainness of the best Hoppers ... repelcommentary. What is said is said in a visual language that translates into fussy, strained English.”

In this work, a lone woman, bathed in sunlight, stands in a doorway of a modest house set in anapparently barren landscape. The woman’s isolation is emphasized by her casual nudity beneath herblue robe, along with the small table and single chair seen throughthe window of the narrow room tothe left. Her open robe is repeated in the slightly open curtains above and to the right. The sparecomposition is made up of contrasting horizontal and vertical elements, which are only interrupted bythe diagonal shapesof the roof, dormer windows and the shadows they cast.

About the painting, Hopper’s wife, Josephine, who posed for most of his female figures, wrote: “Whiteclapboard house, grey shingle roof, deep grey shadows on house & roof. Red chimney & foundation,burnt grass & upper window shades pale yellow ochre. Sky cerulean, horizontal shafts of mackeral [sic]sky white, green along horizon lower left. Blond female in stringy blue kimono open in front overpossibly naked body, effect sloppy, but such a hot day!E.H. made little model of house out of heavywhite paper to observe how light would fall on corner of house.”

FEATURED IMAGE
Edward Hopper (American, 1883–1966),High Noon, 1949, oil on canvas, 27 1/2 x 39 1/2 inches (69.9 x100.3 cm). Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Haswell, 1971.7