Edward Hopper: Quotes about painting

Edward Hopper was prominent American realist painter and printmaker. Explore interesting quotes on painting.
Edward Hopper: 96 quotes9 likes

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

Edward Hopper

1911 - 1940, Notes on Painting - Edward Hopper (1933)

“Just to paint a representation or design is not hard, but to express a thought in painting is. Thought is fluid. What you put on canvas is concrete, and it tends to direct the thought. The more you punt on canvas the more you lose control of the thought. I’ve never been able to paint what I set out to paint.”

Edward Hopper

1941 - 1967
Source: Three Hundred Years of American Painting, Alexander Eliot; New York: Time Inc., 1957, p. 298

“Everyone goes to the 'Grands-Boulevards' and let himself loose... Do not picture these in costume, they are not for the most part.... perhaps a clown with a big nose, or two girls with bare necks and short skirts.... the parade of the queens of the halls [Paris’ markets] is also one of the events.... Some are pretty but look awkward in their silk dresses and crowns, particularly as the broad sun displays their defects – perhaps a neck too thin or a painted face which shows ghastly white in the sunlight.”

Edward Hopper

In a letter to his mother, Paris, May 11, 1907; as quoted in Edward Hopper, Gail Levin, Bonfini Press, Switzerland 1984, p. 27
1905 - 1910

“There may come, or perhaps has come, a time when no further progress in truthful representation is possible. There are those who say that such a point has been reached, an attempt to substitute a more and more simplified and decorative calligraphy. This direction is sterile and without hope to those who wish to give painting a richer and more human meaning and a wider scope. No one can correctly forecast the direction that painting will take in the next few years, but to me at least there seems to be a revulsion against the invention of arbitrary and stylized design.”

Edward Hopper

1911 - 1940, 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.”

Edward Hopper

1911 - 1940, Notes on Painting - Edward Hopper (1933)

“Well, I have a very simple method of painting. It's to paint directly on the canvas without any funny business, as it were, and I use almost pure turpentine to start with, adding oil as I go along until the medium becomes pure oil. I use as little oil as I can possibly help, and that's my method. It's very simple... Yes, linseed oil. I used to use poppy oil, but I have heard that poppy oil is given to cracking pigment too, so I use it no longer... I find linseed oil and white lead the most satisfactory mediums.”

Edward Hopper

1941 - 1967
Source: 'Oral history interview with Edward Hopper' (1959, June 17), conducted by John Morse; 'Archives of American Art', Smithsonian Institution

“I believe that the great painters with their intellect as master have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions. I find any digression from this large aim leads me to boredom.”

Edward Hopper

1911 - 1940, Notes on Painting - Edward Hopper (1933)

“The technical obstacles of painting perhaps dictate this form. It derives also from the limitations of personality, and such may be the simplifications that I have attempted.”

Edward Hopper

1911 - 1940, Notes on Painting - Edward Hopper (1933)

“It is true that the Impressionists perhaps gave a more faithful representation of nature through their discoveries in out-of-door painting. But that they increased their statute as artists by so doing is controversial... If the technical innovations of the Impressionists led merely to a more accurate representation of nature, it was perhaps of not much value in enlarging their powers of expression.”

Edward Hopper

1911 - 1940, Notes on Painting - Edward Hopper (1933)

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

Edward Hopper

Comment on his &#x27;Early Sunday Morning&#x27; (1930) https://www.wikiart.org/en/Search/Early%20Sunday%20Morning <br class="br">1941 - 1967

“After I took up etchings [c. 1915], my paintings seemed to crystallize.”

Edward Hopper

1941 - 1967
Source: 'Edward Hopper: The Emptying Spaces', Suzanne Burrey; in 'Árt Digest', April 1, 1955 p. 10

“I wish I could paint more... I do dozens of sketches for oils.... if I do one that interests me I go on to make a painting but that happens only two or three times a year.”

Edward Hopper

Quote in 'Travelling Man', Time January 1948
1941 - 1967

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

Edward Hopper

quoted by Gail Levin in 'Edward Hopper - an intimate biography' (1995)
1941 - 1967

“[about his painting 'Approaching a CityWell' Hopper painted in 1946:] I've always been interested in approaching a big city in a train, and I can't exactly describe the sensations, but they're entirely human and perhaps have nothing to do with aesthetics. There is a certain fear and anxiety and a great visual interest in the things that one sees coming into a great city. I think that's about all I can say about it.”

Edward Hopper

1941 - 1967
Source: 'Oral history interview with Edward Hopper' (1959, June 17), conducted by John Morse; 'Archives of American Art', Smithsonian Institution

“The trend in some of the contemporary movements in art, but by no means all, seems to deny this ideal and to me appears to lead to a purely decorative conception of painting.”

Edward Hopper

1911 - 1940, Notes on Painting - Edward Hopper (1933)