Edward Hopper

Blackwell's Island
1911

A painting depicting a view from a high vantage point overlooking a river with reflections of sunlight on the water. The foreground shows a dark silhouette of a building's corner and railing, while the background features a landscape with buildings and vegetation under a blue sky with wispy clouds. The artist's signature, "HOPPER," is visible in the lower right corner.

Not on view

Date
1911

Classification
Paintings

Medium
Oil on canvas

Dimensions
Overall: 24 3/8 × 29 5/16in. (61.9 × 74.5 cm) Image: 24 × 29in. (61 × 73.7 cm) Frame: 29 3/16 × 34 3/16 × 2 9/16in. (74.1 × 86.8 × 6.5 cm)

Accession number
70.1188

Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Josephine N. Hopper Bequest

Rights and reproductions
© Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

API
artworks/5899

Audio

Verbal Description: Blackwell's Island, 1928

In Edward Hopper’s New York

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Verbal Description: Blackwell's Island, 1928

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Narrator: Blackwell’s Island, 1928. This painting is among one of the largest of Hopper’s oil paintings, measuring 34 1/2 inches by 59 1/2 inches. On a horizontally oriented canvas, the oil painting Blackwell’s Island depicts a cityscape of Roosevelt Island in 1928, seen from a far away distance. From top to bottom, this painting's composition is neatly divided into thirds. The top of the painting is a band of chilly ice blue sky filled with wispy white clouds. The painterly sky is punctuated by buildings from the cityscape below. The urban and industrial buildings are lit in high contrast as if the sun were falling or rising to the right. Smoke stacks, houses, fortress-like walls, a water tower, all crowd one another on the green of the island. In the town, however, there is a conspicuous absence of people. The buildings sit static; no illuminated windows or foot traffic: just a still, early morning.
Just below the island cityscape, in the lower third of the painting, are bright cobalt blue waves. The movement of the waves grows in intensity from left to right, as a speedboat sails through the water to the right edge of the canvas. The levity of the movement sharply contrasts with the dark stillness of the foreboding buildings.