Your series has been fun and informative. I appreciate the effort.
As I scrolled down through the images and saw the Robert Henri painting, I thought that the work of Edward Hopper would pop up (Hopper was a student of Henri in NY).
Even though he studied for several years in Paris during the time of Picasso and Matisse, Hopper returned to New York to create some quintessentially American paintings. Nighthawks comes to mind.
Hopper's cultural influnce was found manifest in the film noir genre and even Hitchcock's Psycho.
Oh, and he was a staunch conservative as well (this is FreeRepublic after all).
Yes, Hopper is awesome. It seemed we had talked about him before, so I didn't put him in. He's another example of someone who isn't easily labeled. His work is of a higher quality than most of the depression-era Social Realists or Regionalists.
Hopper Summertime 1943 and Sunday Morning and Early Sunday Morning 1930
She seems to be waiting for someone, but I don't think it's the guy in the next painting (which is almost a sequel to the more famous--not infamous--Early Sunday Morning). The date on Summertime, 1943, may suggest that most of the men are away at war. And, in regard to Early Sunday Morning, there used to be a figure in one of the upper apartment windows, but he painted it out. Maybe it was lonely enough without the figure?
The sense of loneliness that I feel in Hopper's work, is often mitigated by the beautiful light therein. But his people seem so isolated and alone. I guess that was his vision of the human existence. (And he was married too. His wife Jo was often the model for the nudes in his works, even when she was close to 70 and the figures in the paintings seemed much younger.)
Hopper is one of my favorites too. I started liking him after seeing a painting, "Groundswell," on one of Republican Professor's art ed threads.
I even printed it out from my computer so I could show it around in awe.
Made the mistake of showing it to my sister in law the other day, who pronounced it crap, saying that her 26 year old son in law is better. Actually her son in law is a talented amateur artist - who knows what he could become if he devoted himself to art? But there have not been many artists on Hoppers level.