Edward Hopper, Evening Wind, an etching

United States of America, AD 1921

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) attended the New York School of Art where he studied under William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri. The artist George Bellows was a fellow classmate. Hopper first learnt the technique of etching from the printmaker Martin Lewis in 1915 while working as a freelance commercial artist. Hopper produced nearly 70 etchings over the next eight years, but abandoned printmaking after his first critical success as a painter in 1924 at the age of 42. As he later admitted, ‘After I took up etching, my painting seemed to crystallize’.

The billowing curtain in Evening Wind gives a sense of movement to the image. The subject of an open window was particularly significant to Hopper. In this etching the window divides the exterior world from the privacy of the girl’s room. There is a stark contrast between the intense black ink of the etched lines and the brilliant white of the untouched paper, which is most evident in the window. During the eight stages of modifications that Hopper made to the plate, the window area remained unaltered.

The four Hopper etchings owned by the British Museum were donated in 1926 by Campbell Dodgson, Keeper of Prints and Drawings from 1912 until 1932.

G. Levin, Edward Hopper: The Complete Prints (New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1979)