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Three nameless guests and a desk clerk occupy the disquieting, airless space of Hotel Lobby.

The cheerlessness of the foyer is enhanced by the lack of rapport among the figures.

Hopper is renowned for paintings infused with loneliness and banality.

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Themes of loneliness, transience, and alienation permeate the haunting images of Edward Hopper. Though he resisted the label, Hopper was a premier practitioner of American Scene Painting-a Depression-era movement that rejected modernism and other European influences, electing instead to render uniquely American subjects in a realist style.

Hotel Lobby presents an image of people who are both traveling and suspended in time. Nameless guests, they occupy a bleak and airless space; what they wait for is unknown. A clerk, nearly hidden in the shadows, observes the scene. The composition's constricting geometry and harsh, raking light reinforce the disquieting mood of the carefully constructed setting. Hopper frequently attended Broadway plays, which he preferred to view from the balcony, a predilection that may explain the scene's elevated and oddly theatrical vantage point.

Hopper, a successful commercial artist long before his paintings received critical acclaim, was keenly aware of European modernism, yet it had little impact on his work. As his biographer Lloyd Goodrich wrote: "Hopper's art from the first had been opposite to the general trends of modernism: instead of subjectivity, a new kind of objectivity; instead of abstraction, a purely representational art; instead of international influences, an art based on American life."

A nation's art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people.
-Edward Hopper, 1933

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Edward Hopper

Hotel Lobby, 1943

oil on canvas

31 ¼ x 40 ¾ in.

William Ray Adams Memorial Collection

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Hopper sold his first painting at age 40 and went on to become one of the most prominent names in American art. He has been labeled an American Scene painter, but he denied that he was painting the American scene. He has also been called a Regionalist, but he said that Regionalists caricatured American life. Hopper favored scenes of loneliness, transience and alienation, but that too is only part of his art. His canvases are windows into the his emotions and his view of the world. He was a realist, but his perception of reality was very personal.

Hopper was born into a middle class family in Nyack, New York, in 1882. By the time he was 17 he knew he wanted to be an artist. He struggled to make money in the field of illustration, which he found distasteful. He studied with William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri and went to Paris, later taking trips  to London, Amsterdam, Berlin and Brussels. He would return to Europe a few more times before settling in Greenwich Village in 1923. He married a former fellow student, Josephine Nivisen, and began a career that focused on recording the mundane things in American life, like restaurants, motels, hotels, trains, movie theaters, houses, quiet landscapes, gas stations, empty roads and buildings with interior views. These paintings also included people in various states of isolation, but never interacting.

Hotel Lobby shows an older couple and a young woman waiting but not interacting. An almost invisible clerk is hidden in the shadows behind the reception desk. He may be observing the entire scene, the younger woman or looking at something on the desk. The light is harsh, the geometry severe and the setting disquieting. A rectangular area of sunlight indicates the time of day, the couple’s heavy coats suggest the weather, and the separation of the older figures from the young girl suggests a comparison between youth and old age. Urban loneliness and the banality of everyday existence are persistent themes in Hopper’s paintings. The careful construction of the setting is also characteristic of the artist, who reinforced the strict geometry of his composition with the pattern of the rug and architectural elements. The scene, with its elevated vantage point, resembles a stage set, possibly influenced by Hopper’s frequent attendance at Broadway plays, which he preferred to view from the balcony.

References

Harriet G. Warkel. Paper to Paint: Edward Hopper’s ‘Hotel Lobby,’ Indianapolis Museum of Art, 2009. ISBN-13: 978-0936260846

Gail Levin. Edward Hopper:  An Intimate Biography, New York: Rizolli, 2007. ISBN-13: 978-0847829309