Edward Hopper

(Le Bistro or The Wine Shop)
1909

Oil painting depicting two people seated at a table outside a café, with a view of a bridge and a row of tall, slender trees in the background under a vast blue sky. The scene conveys a serene, almost desolate atmosphere. The signature "E. Hopper" is visible in the lower right corner.

Not on view

Date
1909

Classification
Paintings

Medium
Oil on canvas

Dimensions
Overall: 24 × 28 7/8in. (61 × 73.3 cm) Frame: 30 1/8 × 35 × 3 7/8in. (76.5 × 88.9 × 9.8 cm)

Accession number
70.1187

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/6073

Audio

Edward Hopper, Le Bistro or The Wine Shop, 1909

In American Legends: From Calder to O'Keeffe

0:00

Edward Hopper, Le Bistro or The Wine Shop, 1909

0:00

Narrator: This painting dates from the years Edward Hopper spent in Paris as a young man. It was by far the most productive time in his career. Hopper first arrived in Paris in October, 1906. He was twenty-four.
Dr. Rick Brettell is a professor of Aesthetic Studies at the University of Texas, a noted Impressionist scholar and has written extensively about Hopper in Paris.

Rick Brettell: When Hopper painted Paris, he painted a city that was almost completely devoid of people. One sees like tiny people rushing across the Pont des Arts or on a distance bridge, or very far away in the suburbs. But there is a sense in which the city is almost a kind of empty stage set, waiting to be populated by others.

Narrator: By 1910, Hopper had left Paris and returned twice, staying once for a full year. Hopper was shy, uneasy in French, and likely spent a lot of time alone.

Rick Brettell: And I think it’s pretty clear when you look at the paintings and drawings and watercolors that he made on those three trips to France that he actually became an American artist in France, and that it was this kind of alienating life of an American, a Protestant American, whose spoken French wasn’t great, in this extraordinarily glittering capital city, that created the kind of, sort of sense of alienation and detachment and emptiness that is so much a part of Hopper’s aesthetic until his death in the 1960s.
Edward Hopper, Le Bistro or The Wine Shop, 1909

In Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time

0:00

Edward Hopper, Le Bistro or The Wine Shop, 1909

0:00

Adam Weinberg: Dr. Rick Brettell is a professor of Aesthetic Studies at the University of Texas, a noted Impressionist scholar and has written extensively about Hopper in Paris.
Rick Brettell: When Hopper painted Paris, he painted a city that was almost completely devoid of people. One sees like tiny people rushing across the Pont des Arts or on a distance bridge, or very far away in the suburbs. But there is a sense in which the city is almost a kind of empty stage set, waiting to be populated by others.
Adam Weinberg: By 1910, Hopper had left Paris and returned twice, staying once for a full year. Hopper was shy, uneasy in French, and likely spent a lot of time alone.
Rick Brettell: And I think it's pretty clear when you look at the paintings and drawings and watercolors that he made on those three trips to France that he actually became an American artist in France, and that it was this kind of alienating life of an American, a Protestant American, who's spoken French wasn't great, in this extraordinarily glittering capital city, that created the kind of, sort of sense of alienation and detachment and emptiness that is so much a part of Hopper's aesthetic until his death in the 1960s.