Edward Hopper

Last Sunday I posted a book cover that features a reproduction of Edward Hopper's High Road (1931). Yesterday I looked up High Road and found that the book cover contains only a detail (the left quarter of the painting is cropped). Not only that, but what I thought was a body of water in the distance is a bluff. Suddenly my relationship to this painting changed, and I have yet to see it in the flesh.

Nineteen-thirty-one was a busy year for Hopper, and a terrible year for the United States, whose GNP fell by 8.5%, and whose unemployment figures rose to 15.9%.

Here is another painting Hopper made in 1931, entitled Freight Car at Truro.

Hard to tell if the freight car is derailed, or if the track is covered in dust.

Further down the line, New York, New Haven and Hartford (1931).

And beyond that, The Camel's Hump (1931).

Until we come to Hotel Room (1931), where a woman in a bathing suit sits on the side of the bed reading a large paperback book.

Too large to be a Bible. Even larger than the book that inspired this post.