By the time he graduated from high school, Edward Hopper knew he wanted to be an artist. He was raised in the small town of Nyack, New York where he was encouraged from an early age to take an interest in the arts. After high school, he studied
illustration in New York for two years. Next, Hopper spent time in Paris, studying art and traveling in Europe.
In 1908 he settled in New York City and worked as an illustrator. Hopper painted in his spare time, but his work did not sell. In 1920, before he received any major recognition, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney gave Hopper his first one-artist exhibition at the Whitney Studio Club.
By 1924 Hopper had some success exhibiting and selling his watercolors, etchings, and paintings, and he was able to give up illustration work and become a full-time artist. That same year, he married Josephine Nivison, who was also a painter. They spent their summers in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where he painted scenes inspired by the seashore, lighthouses, and small-town life he observed there.
