Verbal Description: House at Dusk, 1935

Narrator: House at Dusk, 1935. Oil on canvas, 36 ½ inches by 50 inches. The painting House at Dusk depicts the top floor of an apartment building as dusk settles around the illuminated windows of the white stone building. In this unusual composition, Hopper has placed the complex at the bottom left corner of a horizontally-oriented rectangular canvas. Light scatters across the top row of windows as the tenants ready themselves for nighttime. Some windows remain darkened with curtains drawn. One tenant looks out a window with their arms resting on the sill.

Behind the building, to the right of the canvas, are gray stone steps leading up a grassy hill to lush trees, almost as if the apartment building were in front of a park. The stairway curves to the right before disappearing into the foliage. Only greenery surrounds the apartment building. The very top of the canvas is a band of sky; a painterly gradient of blue to green to yellow with dark wisps of gray clouds on the horizon.