Early Commercial Work 

Melinda Lang: These drawings are all examples of Hopper's early studies in illustration or spec work that he would make for his portfolio.

Narrator: Melinda Lang is a Senior Curatorial Assistant at the Whitney, and helped organize this exhibition. 

Melinda Lang: And he’d bring those works to publishing and magazine offices around the city, when seeking out commissions. Hopper came of age as an illustrator during the early twentieth century magazine boom. At this time, illustration was going through what we call a "golden age.” Hopper studied illustration at the New York School of Illustration and had planned to become an illustrator in earnest. But early on, while he became interested in painting, it really was more of a day job, a freelance job that could help him pay the bills and also funded his trips to Paris between 1906 and 1910.

Narrator: Even in this commercial work, there are suggestions of the artist Hopper would become.

Melinda Lang: Hopper was drawing on images around him, just as he did later on. So looking at the architecture that he passed on the street, the theater—he was often attending the theater as a student. His teachers would encourage him to depict those kinds of subjects that he would see in front of him. So in all of these drawings, the subjects he is choosing are themes that are around him in New York City.