Talking about Hopper & Burchfield- Delaware Art Museum
Edward Hopper (1882-1967), New York, New Haven, and Hartford, oil on canvas, 1931, Indianapolis Museum of Art The other week I flew out to Indianapolis on my way to Terre Haute to judge the Swope Art Museum 's annual 5 state regional juried exhibition. I paid a visit to the impressive Indianapolis Museum of Art . Wanted to single out one painting in their collection, Edward Hopper's oil New York, New Haven, and Hartford. In person the subtlety of Hopper's color mixing is exquisite. My photographs don't come near doing the painting justice. But in these detail shots just above and below Hopper's grasp of how to instill personality into a painting is clear. He depicts a broad-shouldered hillside. Yet against that he conjures up these wildly shaped spindly trees. Their irregular rhythms contrast tellingly against the solemn massiveness of the hillside. Hopper's trees live perhaps a more syncopated life than the stately ground