Analysis Of Rooms By The Sea By Edward Hopper

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“Rooms By The Sea” is a 1951 painting by Edward Hopper but also the object that allowed me an in-depth deliberation on marriage, domestic violence and gender roles.
The painting depicts his studio in Cape Cod, in the house he shared with his wife. It was this detail, and the fact that such a familiar place had been represented with an aura of discomfort and loneliness, that made me want to explore the relationship between Edward Hopper and Josephine Nivison.
It became clear early on that there was plenty of material to go through because, in the years following their deaths, their marriage became a matter for public debate, especially regarding whether or not there had been domestic violence involved, as Josephine herself reported in her …show more content…

Barbara Novak, who knew the couple personally, responded to the accusations saying that it was instead Josephine who mistreated her husband to the point he’d leave him starving for days.
Levin, however, in her article for Women’s Art Journal (1980), doesn’t fail to mention the fondness the two shared for each other and that their marriage happened after many years of friendship and companionship, although hey also had contrasting personalities and were both competitive painters.
Even at the time, as Wood writes in her article Man and Muse (2004), it was clear that their marriage had had a very negative influence on Josephine’s art.
“When she married Edward Hopper, Josephine Nivison was 41, and had been painting successfully for 16 years. Her work had been shown alongside that of Modigliani and Picasso, Maurice Prendergast and Man Ray. She regularly sold drawings to the New York Tribune , the Evening Post and the Chicago Herald Examiner (....). When the Hoppers embarked on their hermitic existence, however, their influences fused to curious effect: as his palette borrowed some of her bright hues he became a runaway success, and when she began to emulate his style she lost all recognition.” (Wood,

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