Rooms by the Sea

1951

Oil on canvas

29 1/4 x 40 in. (74.3 x 101.6 cm) framed: 36 1/4 x 47 3/8 x 3 1/2 in. (92.1 x 120.3 x 8.9 cm)

Bequest of Stephen Carlton Clark, B.A. 1903

1961.18.29

As a mature artist, Edward Hopper spent most of his summers on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. There, he designed and built a sunny, secluded studio at Truro, on a bluff overlooking the water. The view in Rooms by the Sea resembles what Hopper would have seen out the back door of his studio. But the description that he gave this painting in his notebook—“The Jumping Off Place”—suggests that the image is more a metaphor of solitude and introspection than a depiction of the actual place. Like Hopper’s most arresting images, this scene seems to be realistic, abstract, and surrealistic all at once.

Culture:

American

Period:

20th century

Classification:

Paintings

Status:

On view

Bibliography:

Alan Shestack, ed., Yale University Art Gallery Selections (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1983), 86–87, ill.

Artists on Art: Observations by Yale Faculty on Selections from the Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1999), 10–11, ill.

Michael Conforti et al., The Clark Brothers Collect: Impressionist and Early Modern Paintings, exh. cat. (Williamstown, Mass.: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 2006), 186–87, 287, 289, 316, 332, fig. 151.

Carol Troyen et al., Edward Hopper, exh. cat. (Verona, Italy: MFA Publications, 2007), 216, no. 86, ill.

Connie Smith Siegel, Spirit of Drawing: A Sensory Meditation Guide to Creative Expression (New York: Watson-Guptill, 2007), 151, ill.

Nicholas Fox Weber, The Clarks of Cooperstown: Their Singer Sewing Machine Fortune, Their Great and Influential Art Collections, Their Forty-Year Feud (New York: Aldred A. Knopf, 2007), ill.

Jody A. Zorgdrager, Of Consequence (Omaha, Neb.: Backwaters Press, 2008), ill. cover.

Philip Eliasoph, Robert Vickrey: The Magic of Realism (Manchester, Vt.: Hudson Hills Press, 2008), 23, ill.

Heidi Slettedahl Macpherson, Transatlantic Women’s Literature, eds. Susan Manning and Andrew Taylor (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), ill. cover, ill.

Arne Neset, Arcadian Waters and Wanton Seas: The Iconology of Waterscapes in Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Culture, 36 (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), 238, no. 10.1.

Thomas Dumm, Apologia Della Solitudine (Torino, Italy: Bollati Boringhieri, 2010), ill. cover.

Carl Little, Edward Hopper’s New England (Petaluma, Calif.: Pomegranate Commmunications, Inc., 2011), 87, fig. 33.

Karin Ivancsics, Restplatzborse (Weitra, Austria: Bibliothek der Provinz, 2011), ill. cover.

“Looking to Learn, Learning to Teach,” Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin (2013): 46–47, fig. 8.

“The Explainers,” Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin (2013): 52.

Robert Adams, Art Can Help (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 2017), 12, ill.

Note: This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect the Yale University Art Gallery’s complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of such records is ongoing.