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©
Heirs of Josephine Hopper / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), VEGAP, Madrid. All rights reserved
Edward Hopper

Girl at a Sewing Machine

ca. 1921
Oil on canvas.
48.3 x 46 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
595
(
1977.49
)
ROOM 45
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room

Edward Hopper was among the painters who made the biggest contribution to the establishment of realism in America. However, it should be stressed that it was a realism that bore his own, personal stamp. Although Hopper aimed to achieve great objectivity, the emotive quality and powerful simplicity of his images also convey a critical attitude. Lloyd Goodrich summed up the stance of the painter as follows: “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.”

After working as a magazine illustrator for several years and travelling to Paris on various occasions, by the time he painted Girl at a Sewing Machine in 1921, Hopper had fully consolidated his style. In the centre of an urban domestic interior, a young woman with long hair that practically conceals her face is absorbed in working on a sewing machine by a window. The composition recalls similar indoor settings painted by seventeenth-century artists of the Dutch school, and also certain paintings by John Sloan, such as The Cot, which Hopper could have seen in the exhibition of The Eight in 1907. The present painting also bears a certain resemblance to the artist’s later works, especially the etching East Side Interior, executed in 1922.

As in most of Hopper’s indoor scenes, light is the salient feature of the painting. In this case the action takes place on a clear, sunny day and the rays powerfully penetrate the interior, projecting a reflection on the flesh coloured far wall, which helps create a geometrical effect that is heightened by the quadrangular shapes of the window frame. The light also causes the figure of the young woman in white to glisten in the dark interior. What might otherwise be a simple everyday scene is thus given a new dimension, and the solitary woman engrossed in her work becomes an embodiment of the alienation of the human being.

Paloma Alarcó

20th Centurys. XX - Realismos en NorteaméricaPaintingOilcanvas
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Girl at a Sewing Machine

Girl at a Sewing Machine

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German Expressionism from the Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection exhibition catalogue (Spanish with English booklet)

German Expressionism from the Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection exhibition catalogue (Spanish with English booklet)

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Girl at a Sewing Machine. Muchacha cosiendo a máquina, c. 1921
Girl at a Sewing Machine
Edward Hopper

©

Heirs of Josephine Hopper / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), VEGAP, Madrid. All rights reserved

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Girl at a Sewing Machine. Muchacha cosiendo a máquina, c. 1921
Girl at a Sewing Machine
Edward Hopper

©

Heirs of Josephine Hopper / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), VEGAP, Madrid. All rights reserved

Terms of Use

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