Early Sunday Morning

Early Sunday Morning is a 1930 painting by American artist Edward Hopper.

Early Sunday Morning
ArtistEdward Hopper 
Year1930
Mediumoil paint, canvas
MovementAmerican scene painting, social realism 
Dimensions89.4 cm (35.2 in) × 153 cm (60 in)
LocationUnited States
CollectionWhitney Museum of American Art 
Accession No.31.426 

Description

The painting portrays the small businesses and shops of Seventh Avenue in New York City shortly after sunrise. It shows a cloudless sky over a long, red building. A red and blue striped barber pole sits in front of one of the doorways on the right side of the sidewalk, and a green fire hydrant is on the left. The bleak, empty street and storefronts are said to be a representation of the dire state of the city during the Great Depression.

Despite the title, Hopper has said that the painting was not necessarily based on a Sunday view. The painting was originally titled Seventh Avenue Shops. The addition of "Sunday" to the title was "tacked on by someone else".[1]

The image was based on a building nearby Hopper's studio. It is said to be "almost a literal translation of Seventh Avenue", however a few minor details were changed, like decreasing the size of the doorways and making less clear the letters on the storefront. [2]

Provenance

It is currently in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art.[3][4][5][6]

The piece was originally sold to the Whitney for $2,000.[7] It was purchased with funds from Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney just a few months after it was painted, and would go on to become a part of the Whitney's founding collection. [8]

Critical response

"Early Sunday Morning is a prelude to the wakeful coffee urns and to those who tend them to defeat the night". Karal Ann Marling [9]

"The painting’s bone-deep conservatism, and its obvious, almost polemical resistance to the most ambitious European art of its day. In the midst of the depression in America, that conservatism is as much a part of the painting’s subject as the closed shops it depicts." Blake Gopnik [10]

The painting has become the inspiration for other works of art. Examples include Byron Vazakas' poem "Early Sunday Morning" [11] and John Stone's poem of the same name.[12]

References
  1. Levin, Gail (1995). Edward Hopper: An intimate biography. New York: Knopf.
  2. Miller, Dana (2015). Whitney Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collection. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300211832.
  3. "Whitney.org". Archived from the original on 2011-06-18. Retrieved 2011-10-17.
  4. "Edward Hopper: Early Sunday Morning". www.artchive.com.
  5. "Edward Hopper / Early Sunday Morning / (1930)". www.davidrumsey.com.
  6. "Gale.cengage.com" (PDF).
  7. "Hopper: the Supreme American Realist of the 20th Century". www.smithsonianmag.com.
  8. Miller, Dana (2015). Whitney Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collection. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300211832.
  9. Marling, Karal Ann (1988). "Early Sunday Morning". Smithsonian Studies in American Art. 2 (3): 22-53. doi:10.1086/smitstudamerart.2.3.3108956. S2CID 191620492.
  10. https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/whitney-hoppers-sunday-morning-politics-culture-294441
  11. Vazakas, Bryon (1957). "Early Sunday Morning". The Virginia Quarterly Review. 33 (3): 377.
  12. Stone, John (1985). "Early Sunday Morning". The American Scholar. 54 (1): 119–120. JSTOR 41211145.


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