New Views of America

Artists of the Renaissance used the then-new system of linear perspective with mathematical precision. They carefully placed each line to achieve the greatest illusion of depth on the picture plane. Artists continued to work this way for hundreds of years.

By the 20th century, photography had replaced drawing and painting as the main tool for depicting the real world. Some artists experimented with abstract art that did not feature linear perspective. Others, such as mid-20th-century American painter Edward Hopper, preferred to work in a realistic style, even when it was considered “unmodern.”

Hopper is famous for painting scenes of urban and rural American life. Many of his paintings have a lonely or isolated mood. The artist thought of these emotions as features of fast-paced modern life.

The 1925 painting House by the Railroad (top of page) is a “portrait” of a Victorian-era home in Hopper’s hometown, Nyack, New York. There are no people or other houses, which lends the composition an eerie stillness. The house looks so creepy, the movie director Alfred Hitchcock used it as inspiration for the house in his classic thriller Psycho.

The artist once said, “I wanted to paint sunlight on the side of a house.” The sun illuminates the house on the left and casts a dark shadow on the right, adding to the mysterious mood. Hopper painted the house using two-point perspective. The house is set diagonally to the viewer; we see two sides at once. The vertical edge lines of the structure intersect the horizon line at 90 degrees. The horizontal converging lines recede to two vanishing points outside the frame (see diagram).

Hopper hid the horizon line behind a set of railroad tracks in the foreground. He placed the tracks at a slight inward angle, adding more depth to the painting. The tracks also act as a barrier to separate the house from the viewer.

In Hopper’s 1953 Office in a Small City (above), a man sits alone in an office on an upper story of a tall building. He stares out a large window; across the street, there is an older building. Even though he works in the city, the man appears to be completely alone.

In this painting, Hopper uses perspective to try to disorient the viewer. He does it by showing both the inside and the outside of the building. He said, “I wanted to achieve the sensation of showing the interior and exterior of a building simultaneously.” How do you feel when you look at this work?