Early Sunday Morning is a 1930 painting by American artist Edward Hopper.
Early Sunday Morning | |
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Artist | Edward Hopper ![]() |
Year | 1930 |
Medium | oil paint, canvas |
Movement | American scene painting, social realism ![]() |
Dimensions | 89.4 cm (35.2 in) × 153 cm (60 in) |
Location | United States |
Collection | Whitney Museum ![]() |
Accession No. | 31.426 ![]() |
The painting portrays the small businesses and shops of Seventh Avenue in New York City shortly after sunrise. It shows a cloudless sky over a long, red building. A red and blue striped barber pole sits in front of one of the doorways on the right side of the sidewalk, and a green fire hydrant is on the left. The bleak, empty street and storefronts are said to be a representation of the dire state of the city during the Great Depression.
Despite the title, Hopper has said that the painting was not necessarily based on a Sunday view. The painting was originally titled Seventh Avenue Shops. The addition of "Sunday" to the title was "tacked on by someone else".[1]
The image was based on a building nearby Hopper's studio. It is said to be "almost a literal translation of Seventh Avenue", however a few minor details were changed, like decreasing the size of the doorways and making less clear the letters on the storefront. [2]
It is currently in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art.[3][4][5][6]
The piece was originally sold to the Whitney for $2,000.[7] It was purchased with funds from Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney just a few months after it was painted, and would go on to become a part of the Whitney's founding collection. [8]
"Early Sunday Morning is a prelude to the wakeful coffee urns and to those who tend them to defeat the night". Karal Ann Marling [9]
"The painting’s bone-deep conservatism, and its obvious, almost polemical resistance to the most ambitious European art of its day. In the midst of the depression in America, that conservatism is as much a part of the painting’s subject as the closed shops it depicts." Blake Gopnik [10]
The painting has become the inspiration for other works of art. Examples include Byron Vazakas' poem "Early Sunday Morning" [11] and John Stone's poem of the same name.[12]
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