Charles Ritchie

I’ve always wondered why the window on the right is blazing red in Hopper’s Night Windows, 1928. It turns out there is a lamp pressed close to the pane and the color, presumably red curtains or a painted wall, is set off by the glow. The woman, partially seen in center window leans away from the window on the left, a soft white and ultramarine blue curtain that waves in the night breeze. There is a tension between hot and cool, eroticism and purity in this oil painting that reminds me of a poem by Philip Larkin. Not so much the atmosphere but the tension between profane and sacred that the windows on right and left could represent. See Philip Larkin High Windows [warning: this poem contains graphic language]

One of my favorite works by Hopper is in this show. High Road, 1931, a very large watercolor. It spreads out and is very empty with few visual events immediately apparent. The overall effect is openness and light only the the deep shadows of chimneys, and the stark verticals of telephone poles widely spaced in the composition. The road in the foreground balances another road in the distance. Is this a broken single road? Regardless; the effect carries the viewer out out into a vast, planetary space. It is as if Hopper lifts up the horizon to show a great continent with bays and estuaries in the sky. The blue peninsula of Emily Dickenson’s poem 132 “It might be easier.” Unlike Hopper’s contemporary Charles Burchfield, Hopper never uses the moon or sun as a motif to imply the cosmic. His more subtle approach is never clearer to me than in this work.

Link to Edward Hopper’s High Road.

In Hopper’s painting Rooms for Tourists I see so many lights and details in that I don’t find in reproductions. To the lower left a vase is in the window, a bit of white fence illuminated as an inverted triangle further to the left, the dark shapes of houses on the right in the background. When I copy such works of art I discover such elements as these and try to understand their role in the composition. While copying this work I used primarily a 00 (.3 mm) pen point and was able to realize the darks much more easily than with the thiner point I usually use (see image on left). Hopper’s paintings have never been lonely or sad for me. Rooms for Tourists seems particular inviting. On the other hand poet Charles Tomlinson once wrote in his poem Night Ride that “our lights seem more beautiful than our lives.” My interpretation just like anyone’s is simply that; an interpretation.

The show was crowded but strangely no one was in the first room with the etchings. I fell in love with the tiniest work in the show, A Corner, 1919 [upper left on journal page]. Telephone pole bisecting the composition, lots of pairs: two figures, swinging doors, telephone pole and its broken shadow. Very minimal with no minutiae. Just dark trenches of etched line excavating white paper. The white of the paper and thinking ahead to where to preserve it in the composition is so important. That’s one of the great intersections of making prints and painting watercolors. The planning. The light is already there. It’s left to the artist to make the best of it. Otherwise, the white of the paper is hard to beat just by itself.