Office at Night
Encyclopedia
Office at Nighthttp://markelt.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/office_at_night_1940.jpg is a 1940
painting by the American
realist
painter
Edward Hopper
. It is currently owned by the Walker Art Center
in Minneapolis, Minnesota
which purchased the painting in 1948.
The painting depicts an office
, occupied by an attractive young woman in a short-sleeved blue dress, who is standing at an open file cabinet
, and a slightly older man who is perhaps in early middle age. He is dressed in a three-piece suit and is seated behind a desk. The nature of the office is unclear—it could just as easily be the office of a lawyer, an accountant, or of a small business.
—indeed, Hopper later informed Norman A. Geske, the curator of the Walker Art Center, which acquired the painting in 1948, that the idea for the painting was "probably first suggested by many rides on the 'L' train in New York City after dark glimpses of office interiors that were so fleeting as to leave fresh and vivid impressions on my mind." So this is not a prestige office—a fact that is reinforced by the awkward lozenge shape of the room, and by the small size of the man’s desk. A yet smaller desk, holding a typewriter, may belong to the woman. This implies that she may be his secretary
.
Still, this is a corner office, which indicates that within their small organization, this is the most prestigious available space and therefore that the man is, perhaps, the manager or boss.
As in many of his other paintings, Hopper shows movement by means of a wind-blown curtain. In this painting, the ring at the bottom of the drawstring on the blind is swinging outward after the blind has been blown in by a gust of wind—possibly in response to a cross-breeze caused by the passing train.
The gust explains two other things. First, there is a sheet of paper on the floor beside the desk, which must have just blown there from the desk, as it has caught the woman’s eye. Second, the wind has blown the dress tightly around her legs, revealing her voluptuous figure to the strangers on the train—but not to the man, who stares intently at another document.
There is a sexual interpretation of the relationship between the two individuals. Here, as in a number of Hopper’s works, such as Evening Wind (1921)http://arttattler.com/Images/Archive/EdwardHopper/hoppereveningwind.jpg and Summertime (1943)http://www.paintinghere.com/UploadPic/Edward%20Hopper/big/Summertime.jpg, the stirring of curtains or blinds seems to symbolize emotional or physical stirrings. (By contrast, listless curtains in other Hopper paintings like Eleven A.M. (1926)http://www.atuttascuola.it/contributi/arte/hopper/eleven_a_m.jpg and Hotel by a Railroad (1952)http://artmodel.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/hopper-hotelbyarailroad.jpg seem to imply emotional stagnation or an inability to connect.)
One critic writes, “Although the room is brightly lit, we sense that something strange is going on. Apart from the relationship between the two figures, the suspenseful mood arises from the circumstance that they are apparently poring over confidential material at this late hour, looking for a certain document that has yet to turn up.” The man's intense concentration suggests that the matter is critical to him—he has not bothered to take off his jacket despite the fact that it is warm enough for all the windows to be open, and he seems not to have noticed the wind which has caused a document to fall to the floor.
Another critic observes, "In this painting Hopper offers more clues to a narrative than he ordinarily does. To the left of the desk is a piece of paper the woman has just seen. One assumes that when this voluptuous female reaches for the paper, her action will arouse the man. On the back wall Hopper has painted a section of artificial light, which in turn dramatizes the point where the man and woman will interact with each other." This is certainly one possibility, but another option is to interpret this painting as being one of a series about lost opportunities. Perhaps the woman will bend down and, like the nightgown-clad woman seen bending over in Night Windows (1928)http://artmight.com/albums/classic-e/Edward-Hopper/Hopper-Edward-Night-Windows.jpg, will reveal her desirability to voyeuristic strangers on the elevated railroad, still unobserved and unappreciated by her male companion.
Early proposed titles for the painting included Room 1005 and Confidentially Yours, reinforcing the idea that there is a deeper connection between the man and the woman, or that they are working jointly on a matter that involves a high degree of trust between them. In the end, Hopper settled for the more ambiguous title, Office at Night.
As in other nighttime scenes, Hopper had to realistically recreate the complexity of a room lit by multiple, overlapping sources of varying brightness. In this painting as in Nighthawks
, his mastery of this problem is a key to his success. In Office at Night, the light comes from three sources: an overhead light, the lamp on the man’s desk, which sheds a small puddle of intense light, and from a street-light shining in the open window on the right-hand side. Hopper reported that the overlap of the light from the ceiling fixture and the light from the exterior created particular technical difficulties, since they required him to use different shades of white to convey the idea of degrees of shadow. A careful examination of the corner behind the woman reveals the faint shadow that she casts in the weak light of the ceiling fixture, almost lost by the sharply-etched shadow of the filing cabinet in the brighter light of the street lamp.
(‘Jo’), he occupied himself by reading a book by the French essayist, Paul Valéry
.
On January 25, at Jo’s insistence, Edward and Jo attended an exhibition of Italian masters at the Museum of Modern Art
. Jo’s diary records that their attention was drawn, in particular, to Botticelli’s
Birth of Venus
, which she had seen before their marriage at its home in the Uffizi
. Edward had, before this time, only ever seen photographs of the painting. She enthused about the painting, while Edward dismissed it as “only another pretty girl picture”—a dismissive characterization that causes his biographer, Gail Levin, to conclude that this comment betrayed “some deeper stir.”
The next evening, Edward declared (as Levin puts it) “that he needed to go out to ‘meditate’ a new picture”. His journey around town seems to have included a trip on the elevated train. A day after this, on January 27, he made another trip, to purchase canvas, indicating that he had conceived his new painting and would soon be ready to begin. Jo’s diary for this date notes that “he has a black and white drawing of a man at a desk in an office & a girl to left side of room & an effect of lighting.”
Several sketches followed, as Hopper adjusted the image on paper to more closely match the vision in his head. As was his practice, Jo served as his model for the female figure. Her February 1 diary entry records,
Each day, Edward worked on the painting “until it is almost pitch dark.” By February 19 the canvas had progressed to the point that Jo observed, “Each day I don’t see how E. can add another stroke”—but also that his changes were making “this picture…more palpable—not fussy…reduced to essentials…so realized.”
On February 22, the finished painting was taken to a gallery, where a variety of titles were suggested. The gallery-owner’s assistant suggested: “Cordially Yours; Room 1506.” Hopper himself suggested “Time and Half for Over Time, Etc.” Further proposed names, derived from these ones, were recorded a few days later by Jo in her and Edward’s journal of his paintings.
75th anniversary exhibition, to which Edward had been invited as a guest exhibitor. At the exhibition, the painting won a $1,000 prize.
The journal contains a scratched-out note stating that the painting was sold in spring 1948 to the Butler Art Institute
in Youngstown, Ohio for "1,500 -1/3", paid on July 27, 1949. Another note, immediately below, contradicts this, stating that the painting was sold to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis for the same amount, on June 27, 1949.
A final journal note, also in Jo’s hand, states “John Clancy cited value for insurance 15,000—1964.”
In 2006, the painting was on display for several months at the Whitney Museum of American Art
for an exhibition.
1940 in art
-Events:*Xawery Dunikowski is deported to the concentration camp at Auschwitz, where he survives until 1945.*October - Grandma Moses' first solo exhibition, "What a Farm Wife Painted", opens at Otto Kallir's Galerie Saint-Etienne in New York City.-Paintings:...
painting by the American
Visual arts of the United States
American art encompasses the history of painting and visual art in the United States. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, artists primarily painted landscapes and portraits in a realistic style. A parallel development taking shape in rural America was the American craft movement,...
realist
Realism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching...
. It is currently owned by the Walker Art Center
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...
in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
which purchased the painting in 1948.
The painting depicts an office
Office
An office is generally a room or other area in which people work, but may also denote a position within an organization with specific duties attached to it ; the latter is in fact an earlier usage, office as place originally referring to the location of one's duty. When used as an adjective, the...
, occupied by an attractive young woman in a short-sleeved blue dress, who is standing at an open file cabinet
Filing cabinet
A filing cabinet is a piece of office furniture usually used to store paper documents in file folders. In the most simple sense, it is an enclosure for drawers in which items are stored. The two most common forms of filing cabinets are blocky files and diagonal files...
, and a slightly older man who is perhaps in early middle age. He is dressed in a three-piece suit and is seated behind a desk. The nature of the office is unclear—it could just as easily be the office of a lawyer, an accountant, or of a small business.
Interpretation
Several clues provide context: The high angle from which the viewer looks down on the office implies that the viewer may be looking in from a passing elevated trainElevated railway
An elevated railway is a form of rapid transit railway with the tracks built above street level on some form of viaduct or other steel or concrete structure. The railway concerned may be constructed according to the standard gauge, narrow gauge, light rail, monorail or suspension railway system...
—indeed, Hopper later informed Norman A. Geske, the curator of the Walker Art Center, which acquired the painting in 1948, that the idea for the painting was "probably first suggested by many rides on the 'L' train in New York City after dark glimpses of office interiors that were so fleeting as to leave fresh and vivid impressions on my mind." So this is not a prestige office—a fact that is reinforced by the awkward lozenge shape of the room, and by the small size of the man’s desk. A yet smaller desk, holding a typewriter, may belong to the woman. This implies that she may be his secretary
Secretary
A secretary, or administrative assistant, is a person whose work consists of supporting management, including executives, using a variety of project management, communication & organizational skills. These functions may be entirely carried out to assist one other employee or may be for the benefit...
.
Still, this is a corner office, which indicates that within their small organization, this is the most prestigious available space and therefore that the man is, perhaps, the manager or boss.
As in many of his other paintings, Hopper shows movement by means of a wind-blown curtain. In this painting, the ring at the bottom of the drawstring on the blind is swinging outward after the blind has been blown in by a gust of wind—possibly in response to a cross-breeze caused by the passing train.
The gust explains two other things. First, there is a sheet of paper on the floor beside the desk, which must have just blown there from the desk, as it has caught the woman’s eye. Second, the wind has blown the dress tightly around her legs, revealing her voluptuous figure to the strangers on the train—but not to the man, who stares intently at another document.
There is a sexual interpretation of the relationship between the two individuals. Here, as in a number of Hopper’s works, such as Evening Wind (1921)http://arttattler.com/Images/Archive/EdwardHopper/hoppereveningwind.jpg and Summertime (1943)http://www.paintinghere.com/UploadPic/Edward%20Hopper/big/Summertime.jpg, the stirring of curtains or blinds seems to symbolize emotional or physical stirrings. (By contrast, listless curtains in other Hopper paintings like Eleven A.M. (1926)http://www.atuttascuola.it/contributi/arte/hopper/eleven_a_m.jpg and Hotel by a Railroad (1952)http://artmodel.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/hopper-hotelbyarailroad.jpg seem to imply emotional stagnation or an inability to connect.)
One critic writes, “Although the room is brightly lit, we sense that something strange is going on. Apart from the relationship between the two figures, the suspenseful mood arises from the circumstance that they are apparently poring over confidential material at this late hour, looking for a certain document that has yet to turn up.” The man's intense concentration suggests that the matter is critical to him—he has not bothered to take off his jacket despite the fact that it is warm enough for all the windows to be open, and he seems not to have noticed the wind which has caused a document to fall to the floor.
Another critic observes, "In this painting Hopper offers more clues to a narrative than he ordinarily does. To the left of the desk is a piece of paper the woman has just seen. One assumes that when this voluptuous female reaches for the paper, her action will arouse the man. On the back wall Hopper has painted a section of artificial light, which in turn dramatizes the point where the man and woman will interact with each other." This is certainly one possibility, but another option is to interpret this painting as being one of a series about lost opportunities. Perhaps the woman will bend down and, like the nightgown-clad woman seen bending over in Night Windows (1928)http://artmight.com/albums/classic-e/Edward-Hopper/Hopper-Edward-Night-Windows.jpg, will reveal her desirability to voyeuristic strangers on the elevated railroad, still unobserved and unappreciated by her male companion.
Early proposed titles for the painting included Room 1005 and Confidentially Yours, reinforcing the idea that there is a deeper connection between the man and the woman, or that they are working jointly on a matter that involves a high degree of trust between them. In the end, Hopper settled for the more ambiguous title, Office at Night.
As in other nighttime scenes, Hopper had to realistically recreate the complexity of a room lit by multiple, overlapping sources of varying brightness. In this painting as in Nighthawks
Nighthawks
Nighthawks is a 1942 painting by Edward Hopper that portrays people sitting in a downtown diner late at night. It is considered Hopper's most famous painting, as well as one of the most recognizable in American art...
, his mastery of this problem is a key to his success. In Office at Night, the light comes from three sources: an overhead light, the lamp on the man’s desk, which sheds a small puddle of intense light, and from a street-light shining in the open window on the right-hand side. Hopper reported that the overlap of the light from the ceiling fixture and the light from the exterior created particular technical difficulties, since they required him to use different shades of white to convey the idea of degrees of shadow. A careful examination of the corner behind the woman reveals the faint shadow that she casts in the weak light of the ceiling fixture, almost lost by the sharply-etched shadow of the filing cabinet in the brighter light of the street lamp.
Inspiration and creation
In late December 1939 and early January 1940, Edward Hopper went through a creative dry spell. During this time, according to entries in the diary kept by his wife JosephineJosephine Hopper
Josephine Hopper was an American painter. She is best known today as the wife of Edward Hopper, whom she married in 1924.-Biography:She was born in Manhattan into a lower class family...
(‘Jo’), he occupied himself by reading a book by the French essayist, Paul Valéry
Paul Valéry
Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath...
.
On January 25, at Jo’s insistence, Edward and Jo attended an exhibition of Italian masters at the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
. Jo’s diary records that their attention was drawn, in particular, to Botticelli’s
Sandro Botticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance...
Birth of Venus
The Birth of Venus (Botticelli)
The Birth of Venus is a painting by Sandro Botticelli. It depicts the goddess Venus, having emerged from the sea as a fully grown woman, arriving at the sea-shore...
, which she had seen before their marriage at its home in the Uffizi
Uffizi
The Uffizi Gallery , is a museum in Florence, Italy. It is one of the oldest and most famous art museums of the Western world.-History:...
. Edward had, before this time, only ever seen photographs of the painting. She enthused about the painting, while Edward dismissed it as “only another pretty girl picture”—a dismissive characterization that causes his biographer, Gail Levin, to conclude that this comment betrayed “some deeper stir.”
The next evening, Edward declared (as Levin puts it) “that he needed to go out to ‘meditate’ a new picture”. His journey around town seems to have included a trip on the elevated train. A day after this, on January 27, he made another trip, to purchase canvas, indicating that he had conceived his new painting and would soon be ready to begin. Jo’s diary for this date notes that “he has a black and white drawing of a man at a desk in an office & a girl to left side of room & an effect of lighting.”
Several sketches followed, as Hopper adjusted the image on paper to more closely match the vision in his head. As was his practice, Jo served as his model for the female figure. Her February 1 diary entry records,
Each day, Edward worked on the painting “until it is almost pitch dark.” By February 19 the canvas had progressed to the point that Jo observed, “Each day I don’t see how E. can add another stroke”—but also that his changes were making “this picture…more palpable—not fussy…reduced to essentials…so realized.”
On February 22, the finished painting was taken to a gallery, where a variety of titles were suggested. The gallery-owner’s assistant suggested: “Cordially Yours; Room 1506.” Hopper himself suggested “Time and Half for Over Time, Etc.” Further proposed names, derived from these ones, were recorded a few days later by Jo in her and Edward’s journal of his paintings.
Ownership and exhibition history
The painting remained in Hopper’s ownership for several years. According to Jo’s journal notes, it was displayed in 1945 at the Salmagundi Club’sSalmagundi Club
The Salmagundi Club, also known as the Salmagundi Art Club, was founded in 1871 in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York, in the United States. It currently is located at 47 Fifth Avenue...
75th anniversary exhibition, to which Edward had been invited as a guest exhibitor. At the exhibition, the painting won a $1,000 prize.
The journal contains a scratched-out note stating that the painting was sold in spring 1948 to the Butler Art Institute
Butler Institute of American Art
The Butler Institute of American Art, located on Wick Avenue in Youngstown, Ohio, United States, was the first museum dedicated exclusively to American art. Established by local industrialist and philanthropist Joseph G. Butler, Jr., the museum has been operating pro bono since 1919...
in Youngstown, Ohio for "1,500 -1/3", paid on July 27, 1949. Another note, immediately below, contradicts this, stating that the painting was sold to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis for the same amount, on June 27, 1949.
A final journal note, also in Jo’s hand, states “John Clancy cited value for insurance 15,000—1964.”
In 2006, the painting was on display for several months at the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
for an exhibition.
