Lonesome

Hopper Marries His Wife, Josephine Nivison

Edward Hopper has an interesting relationship to women. He marries Josephine Nivison in 1924. The two of them fought like cats and dogs, however he still used her as his muse for most of his work, including The Woman in the Sun. FemBio, a website that records biographies for influential women, describes their marriage as Josephine's "one huge mistake in her life." With this marriage, Josephine lost everything. She herself was an artist, losing everything she worked for to her husband's shadow to be his support system. She reportedly lost friends and joy for life however she never left him. He expected her to be the ideal housewife, something that was still chiefly a norm in the time. By most accounts, this relationship would be considered abusive. When you consider the idea that The Woman in the Sun is Josephine herself, there is two huge influences that their marriage has on the painting. 

First, it is reported that their sex life was "sheer horror" consisting of rape and unwanted anal sex. The nude painting of a woman who has experienced unwanted sexual encounters has an entirely different contextual meaning when knowing this. The woman is stripped of clothing, almost similar into the way that one would be stripped of potentially her dignity with the unwanted sexual contact. Josephine experienced something no one should have to ever experience in the state of dress that she is painted in here, and here again bends for the sexual desires of the person painting it, whether she’s willing to participate. 

However, it is interesting to note that although she never described her sexual life with Edward with great words, she was willing to give him everything. Be it her career as an artist, her virginity and everything that he wanted from her. We almost see this reflected back at her within The Woman in the Sun, as she gives her all to this light, both metaphorically in the way she shows off to the outpouring of light in the scene and literaly in the way that she gives up everything for Edward to be successful and happy, not stopping to think about herself. The same blog, FemBio, says "Nivison loved the monster Hopper to the end." She truly gave everything to him no matter his hostility. She is the woman who gives her all to this "light" that is shown disconnected to her, a reflection of the relationship they shared. 

NightHawks

Taking place during WW2, Hopper paints a scene with four patrons in a diner that becomes one of his most famous works. To dissect this piece, you must first understand that America sees a large amount of death take place on the battle fields across the sea. The death and destruction that America sees is equally, if not less than, the amount that they watch other countries also lose people on both sides of the war. It is a harrowing time for people, one that is hard to both wrap your head around and see a future that is without what is currently happening within the world. It is the same way that we had trouble seeing past our noses at COVID-19 ever being able to scale down to a point where mask mandates would be lifted, and we would cease to live in complete fear. America during the early 1940's lives the same way, and here Hopper takes this experience of random people who all are so lost within themselves, possibly thinking about the war that rages around them and the reality that follows for them that they fail to see past their noses that they are not the only ones going through the rough time. Hopper plays on this frequently, sourcing this idea of inherent loneliness that we feel when adverse life events play out. He uses this tie of loneliness throughout many of his pieces to come, including the Woman in the Sun, where this woman also exemplifies this loneliness that can never be solved as she cannot connect to the people that may be in her life. His subjects reflect maybe what he may feel himself; an inability to connect with those around them in a meaningful way that leads down the road of loneliness and complete isolation.

Birth Control is Approved by the FDA

Birth control is approved by the FDA in 1960. This event is interesting to the hisory behind the painting The Woman in the Sun because it highlights the specific kind of subject that Edward is likely portraying here. When we think of the time before the 1960's, there is this pressure or stigma for women to be the perfect housewife. Even in the wake of the second World War, we see encouragement for women to return to the house and their originally defined "role" within it. Although this is still something pushed at this time in 1960, we see a slight shift to the housewife for a bit more freedom; only freedom that fits with the husband's role of his wife, however. This includes things like the idea of the Mrs. Degree becoming popular and this birth control approval. When thinking about the painting, we look at a woman who stands in a sparse room. There is hardly anything in the room to give us a look into her life, but in this absence, we can infer that the absence can extend into her personal relationships. There is only a single bed in the room, which is not nearly enough space for two people to have slept there commonly. The only sign of clothing is a pair of heels next to the bed, without any sign of a counterparts clothing to possibly explain her state of dress. There is a movement here that he suggests that she is not married, something that at the time was no incredibly likely to see. Especially since a lot of the income still lied with the man of the house, possibly explaining the sparseness of the room as she has no access to such. This woman may be using the recently approved birth control, meaning she can stand to wait to marry- if at all. 

Edward Hopper's Woman in the Sun

My assigned image from Edward Hopper

Hopper Dies

An honorable mention that I wanted to share was the knowledge that Hopper dies about five or six years after the painting The Woman in the Sun is finished. I thought it was of interest to note that the theme of loneliness continues until his death and makes me wonder whether he felt this intense loneliness within his psyche and how that may have come out within his works up until his demise. I attached his final image Two Comedians, finished in 1966, the year before his death. It is interesting to note with this piece that this is one of the only in the years leading up to his death to contain more than one figure. Even further, it is one of the only ones to contain the depiction of a relationship between the characters that goes beyond the superficial relationship of location. Looping back to his marriage and how unhappy that tended to be throughout their time together, there was many times an insinuation that he was with her for sexual purposes the majority of their time. The painting of a man and a woman together almost moving into the foreground leaves room for an interpretation that maybe, be it possibly only in his final years, Hopper did consider Josephine his love, and this is him attempting to pull her into the light that could be interpreted as an afterlife after their deaths, which occured only a year apart. In a more insiduous reading, this could be construed as him pulling the woman he used through life for all of his desires into a seemingly eternal hell. It is unclear, but interesting to come to your own conclusions about.