Haskell's House 1924

Edward Hopper made 'Haskell's House' with watercolor on paper. It has these pale blues and greens. The building itself is stark white. I bet Hopper stood on a street corner, squinting in the sun, trying to capture that bright light hitting the house, and those shadows that give it so much depth. What’s he thinking about, as he paints? Maybe he’s thinking about how the light makes the house look like it's almost floating, or the weird angles that make the scene a little unsettling. There's something about how Hopper uses color—thin washes, really—that makes everything feel a bit lonely, even a big house like this one. It reminds me a little of Fairfield Porter's houses, but Hopper's got this extra layer of, like, emotional distance. He and Porter were looking at similar subjects, but with totally different feelings. I always think of painting as a way for artists to talk to each other across time. It's like Hopper's having a conversation with painters from the past, and maybe even with us, about how we see the world.