Edward Hopper
American, 1882-1967

In a theater waiting for the audience to assemble, a couple settles into their seats while a woman in a box reads her program. As in so many of his paintings, Edward Hopper here stages a drama of routine daily life played out by self-absorbed strangers.

Hopper rejected the radical modernist art he saw during the first decade of the century, as a young man in Paris. Instead he painted barns, houses, gas stations, theaters, and deserted cafes with precision and an overwhelming absence of sentiment. He looked at American life with a fresh eye, seeing the remoteness and loneliness that existed everywhere.

Oil on canvas, 1927
Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, 1935.49
© 1927 Edward Hopper