Edward Hopper Quotes

After all, we are not French and never can be, and any attempt to be so is to deny our inheritance and to try to impose upon ourselves a character that can be nothing but a veneer upon the surface. ”
-Edward Hopper

I believe that the great painters with their intellect as master have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions. ”
-Edward Hopper

I find in working always the disturbing intrusion of elements not a part of my most interested vision, and the inevitable obliteration and replacement of this vision by the work itself as it proceeds. ”
-Edward Hopper

I find linseed oil and white lead the most satisfactory mediums. ”
-Edward Hopper

I have tried to present my sensations in what is the most congenial and impressive form possible to me. ”
-Edward Hopper

I think that zinc white has a property of scaling and cracking. ”
-Edward Hopper

I trust Winsor and Newton and I paint directly upon it. ”
-Edward Hopper

I use a retouching varnish which is made in France, Libert, and that's all the varnish I use. ”
-Edward Hopper

If the picture needs varnishing later, I allow a restorer to do that, if there's any restoring necessary. ”
-Edward Hopper

If the technical innovations of the Impressionists led merely to a more accurate representation of nature, it was perhaps of not much value in enlarging their powers of expression. ”
-Edward Hopper

In general it can be said that a nation's art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people. ”
-Edward Hopper

In its most limited sense, modern, art would seem to concern itself only with the technical innovations of the period. ”
-Edward Hopper

It's to paint directly on the canvas without any funny business, as it were, and I use almost pure turpentine to start with, adding oil as I go along until the medium becomes pure oil. I use as little oil as I can possibly help, and that's my method. ”
-Edward Hopper

Maybe I am not very human - what I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house. ”
-Edward Hopper

More of me comes out when I improvise. ”
-Edward Hopper

My aim in painting has always been the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impression of nature. ”
-Edward Hopper

No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination. ”
-Edward Hopper

Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great. ”
-Edward Hopper

The only real influence I've ever had was myself. ”
-Edward Hopper

The question of the value of nationality in art is perhaps unsolvable. ”
-Edward Hopper

The trend in some of the contemporary movements in art, but by no means all, seems to deny this ideal and to me appears to lead to a purely decorative conception of painting. ”
-Edward Hopper

There is a sort of elation about sunlight on the upper part of a house. ”
-Edward Hopper

There will be, I think, an attempt to grasp again the surprise and accidents of nature and a more intimate and sympathetic study of its moods, together with a renewed wonder and humility on the part of such as are still capable of these basic reactions. ”
-Edward Hopper

Well, I have a very simple method of painting. ”
-Edward Hopper

Well, I've always been interested in approaching a big city in a train, and I can't exactly describe the sensations, but they're entirely human and perhaps have nothing to do with aesthetics. ”
-Edward Hopper

Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. ”
-Edward Hopper