Born on July 22, 1882 in Nyack, NY, he began his artistic studies sketching steamboats on the Hudson River from a young age. Hopper went on to train as a commercial illustrator before transferring to the New York School of Art, where he studied painting under William Merrit Chase and Robert Henri alongside George Bellows. In 1905, having graduated, Hopper worked at advertising agency as an illustrator of trade magazine covers—work which the artist famously detested, but maintained for many years out of financial necessity. After years of working as an illustrator, in 1923 he sold 6 watercolors to the Brooklyn Museum, enabling him to retire from illustration and devote himself to painting. From the late 1920s onward, he produced works which maintained a coherent style and mood, ranging from 1927’s Automat to Second Story Sunlight of 1960. Hopper died on May 15, 1967 in New York, NY. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Tate Gallery in London, among others.
Courtesy of artnet.com