Hopper in Maine.

Reviewing art exhibitions in New York City for the February 1926 issue of the Arts, Lloyd Goodrich wrote that in one of them, House by the Railroad, painted by Edward Hopper in 1925, was probably "the most striking.... Without attempting to be anything more than a simple and direct portrait of an ugly house in an ugly place, it succeeded in being one of the most poignant and desolating pieces of realism that we have ever seen." The Hopper specialist Gail Levin, who has written a book entitled Hopper's Places and matched many of Hopper's subjects to actual scenes, cannot be sure that this painting was executed in Haverstraw, New York, as others have affirmed. However, there are many subjects in his oeuvre that can be identified, since throughout his life places played an important role in Hopper's approach to art. This is investigated in an exhibition entitled Edward Hopper's Rockland on view at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, from June 6 to September 26.

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Rockland was home to Hopper and his new artist wife, Josephine, for the summer of 1926, which was a productive time for the artist. Josephine can be credited for encouraging her husband to work in watercolor, an exceedingly demanding medium at which Hopper excelled. The seven weeks the couple spent in Rockland yielded an unknown number of sketches and some twenty watercolors. Later the Hoppers would paint from their car, but that summer they set out on foot to their ...