Edward Hopper, Study for Route 6, Eastham, 1941

Carter Foster: So this drawing is a study for Hopper's painting, Route 6, Eastham, from 1941. What's amazing about it is this conceptual balance you have between the architectural details and the space of the road and this house on it and all these color notations that Hopper made.

It's full of color notations, very specific ones that describe, in interesting adjectives, different shades of gray and how carefully Hopper wanted to remember the colors that he was actually seeing, so that when he went to make the painting back in the studio, he clearly used this as a memory aid.So it shows this tension between the real and the imagined that was really at the heart of Hopper's art.