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Lot Essay
Painted in September 1938, Edward Hopper's watercolor Sugar Maple is one of 5 or 6 completed watercolors Hopper executed during a trip to his friend Bob Slater's property in South Royalton, Vermont. Two works from the trip remained unfinished after the destructive hurricane of 1938 barreled through New England. Josephine Hopper, Edward's wife, wrote, in a letter to the eventual owner of the present work about the circumstances of that trip to Vermont that "it's a lovely land...then came the big hurricane, the first that all of us in the New England section knew much about, came & ripped up plenty. We rushed back to Cape Cod, carrying Sugar Maple & a batch of Vermont watercolors in the trunk compartment of our Buick." (as quoted in G. Levin, Edward Hopper: A Catalogue Raisonné, Volume II, New York, 1995, p. 291)
Hopper's first professional forays into watercolor were in the summer 1923, when he produced a series of works in the Massachusetts harbor town of Gloucester. These works later garnered critical praise at a show, where one work, The Mansard Roof, was purchased by the Brooklyn Museum. This small but significant success led to larger successes, and in 1924 "all eleven watercolors he exhibited [at a one-man show at the Frank K.M. Rehn Gallery] and five additional ones were sold." (Levin, Edward Hopper: A Catalogue Raisonné, Volume I, p. 66) The spontaneity and looseness he was able to achieve with watercolor as a medium led and encouraged him to explore and experiment.
Hopper's desire to vary his subject matter led him out of New York City many times, travelling with Jo to Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont, South Carolina, Wyoming, Oregon, California, among other places. He loved to visit places that allowed him to find, capture, and record America's scenery with watercolor. Gail Levin writes, in reference to Hopper's watercolors, "light was the language through which Hopper expressed the forms and views before him. His watercolors were simply recordings of his observations, painted almost entirely out-of-doors, directly before his subject matter." (Edward Hopper: A Catalogue Raisonné, Volume I, p. 65-6)
In Sugar Maple, Hopper focuses on the tree itself, but as is true with much of his work, the painting also exists as a study of light and dark and its effect on the overall mood of the work. The stark contrast between the sunlit and shadowed areas of the watercolor manages to imply the feelings of loneliness and solitude that pervade so much of his work.
According to Gail Levin, this work is described in the artist's Record Book (II, p. 53, s.v. Fall 1938): "Sugar Maple. Mostly greens -- light & dark. Tree dark. Before hurricane Sep. 24, '38." (G. Levin, Edward Hopper: A Catalogue Raisonné, p. 291)
Hopper's first professional forays into watercolor were in the summer 1923, when he produced a series of works in the Massachusetts harbor town of Gloucester. These works later garnered critical praise at a show, where one work, The Mansard Roof, was purchased by the Brooklyn Museum. This small but significant success led to larger successes, and in 1924 "all eleven watercolors he exhibited [at a one-man show at the Frank K.M. Rehn Gallery] and five additional ones were sold." (Levin, Edward Hopper: A Catalogue Raisonné, Volume I, p. 66) The spontaneity and looseness he was able to achieve with watercolor as a medium led and encouraged him to explore and experiment.
Hopper's desire to vary his subject matter led him out of New York City many times, travelling with Jo to Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont, South Carolina, Wyoming, Oregon, California, among other places. He loved to visit places that allowed him to find, capture, and record America's scenery with watercolor. Gail Levin writes, in reference to Hopper's watercolors, "light was the language through which Hopper expressed the forms and views before him. His watercolors were simply recordings of his observations, painted almost entirely out-of-doors, directly before his subject matter." (Edward Hopper: A Catalogue Raisonné, Volume I, p. 65-6)
In Sugar Maple, Hopper focuses on the tree itself, but as is true with much of his work, the painting also exists as a study of light and dark and its effect on the overall mood of the work. The stark contrast between the sunlit and shadowed areas of the watercolor manages to imply the feelings of loneliness and solitude that pervade so much of his work.
According to Gail Levin, this work is described in the artist's Record Book (II, p. 53, s.v. Fall 1938): "Sugar Maple. Mostly greens -- light & dark. Tree dark. Before hurricane Sep. 24, '38." (G. Levin, Edward Hopper: A Catalogue Raisonné, p. 291)