Collection: Edward Hopper & Cape Ann: Illuminating an American Landscape
Cape Ann Museum
July 22, 2023 — Oct. 16, 2023
July through October is your chance to see the American artist Edward Hopper’s early works painted on number of visits to Cape Ann at the start of his fame. Though Hopper (1882-1967) had painted for years in relative obscurity, selling only one painting before the age of 40, it was on Cape Ann, with the encouragement of his eventual wife, Josephine “Jo” Nivison, that he began the iconic watercolor landscapes and houses that launched his success.
Edward Hopper & Cape Ann: Illuminating an American Landscape is on view at CAM this summer. Opening on July 22, Hopper’s birthday, exactly 100 years after his pivotal trip to Gloucester (then celebrating its 300th anniversary), this once-in-a-generation exhibition offers a fresh look at one of America’s best-known artists at the crucial moment that profoundly shaped his art and his life. It shows the largely ignored but significant origin story of Hopper’s years in and around Gloucester, Massachusetts—a period and place that imbued Hopper’s paintings with a clarity and purpose that had eluded his earlier work. The success of Hopper’s Gloucester watercolors transformed his work in all media and set the stage for his monumental career.
