Rooftop watercolors

Narrator: These watercolors depict rooftops around Washington Square Park. Hopper had moved his home and studio to 3 Washington Square North in 1913. In 1932, he and his wife Josephine Nivison Hopper moved to a different unit in the same building. The apartment was not large, but it had expansive views of the park and the surrounding buildings, which became a frequent subject for the artist.

Kirsty Bell: Edward Hopper was always attracted to roofs and particularly the roofs that he could see from the studio he was working in.

Narrator: Kirsty Bell is a writer and critic. 

Kirsty Bell: It seems like these city roofs, these more kind of clandestine areas that aren't part of the known cityscape made something more intimate available to Hopper. They're more intimate portraits of these aspects of architecture that are not meant to be visible. The skylights and chimneys, and there's something kind of melancholy, but also maybe tender about the way he's approaching this material.