Edward Hopper Quotes

American realist painter and printmaker (1882-1967)

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.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

It seemed awful crude and raw here when I got back [after his return from his third and last trip to Europe, in 1910]. It took me ten years to get over Europe.

The killing of the horses [a bullfight in Madrid, he visited in June 1910] by the bull is very horrible, much more so as they have no chance to escape and are ridden up to the bull to be butchered.. ..the entry of the bull into the ring however is very beautiful; his surprise and the first charges he makes are very pretty.

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.

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.

The people here in fact seem to live in the streets, which are alive from morning until night, not as they are in New York with that never-ending determination for the 'long-green', but with a pleasure-loving crowd that doesn’t care what it does or where it goes, so that it has a good time.

Paris is a very graceful and beautiful city, almost too formal and sweet to the taste after the raw disorder of New York. Everything seems to have been planned with the purpose of forming a most harmonious whole, which certainly has been done.. .Every street here is alive with all sorts of conditions of people, priests, nuns, students, and always the little soldiers with wide red pants.