As one of the most important painters of the twentieth century, Edward Hope (1882-1967) created an artistic style full of American feelings, capturing the subtle charm of modern urban life and the complex mind of urban people with strong powers of observation and empathy.
Before he became famous, Hope was mainly engaged in commercial illustration design, which was his means of making a living. At that time, social development changed greatly, and in order to pursue modern functions, various high-rise buildings full of modern design were erected, hard and cold.
As a result, the cityscape of New York became a common life scene in Hope's writings. But in the picture, Hope can always create a strange and alienated feeling, exuding the loneliness and silence of the city, which has become his most classic style, but also the representative of the American urban image in the early 20th century.
Hope is introverted, likes to be quiet and alone, sensitive and observant at heart, and has an in-depth study of the psychology of contemporary people. And all of this is finally manifested under his superficially unremarkable life themes: night diners, dim hotel interiors, lonely residential buildings...
In the most classic "Nighthawk", the scene is very ordinary, like the shops, intersections and small shops that every office worker will pass through every day to and from work, which should have belonged to the inconspicuous scenery.
However, Hope has depicted the loneliness in the hearts of modern urbanites in the night, a few indifferent faces, a back, quiet, lonely, confused, a simple scene, which has set off all loneliness.
Hope's spatial construction is unique and fascinating. In 1935, he created Shakespeare at dusk, in which the city is quite poetic in the twilight, there is no sound of vehicles, no crowd noise, only a statue of Shakespeare, standing quietly in Central Park, facing the city buildings in the twilight, a tranquility.
In Hope's paintings, there are few clearly recognizable modern skyscrapers, and few of them show the location of the real New York City so clearly, and the location of Shakespeare's portrait is the southern end of the Central Park Boulevard.
Shakespeare seems to be bowing his head in contemplation as if facing the twilight of the city, and it presents a poetic gaze and literary reflection. Due to the change of light and shadow, the picture has produced a unique texture, lonely, empty, mysterious, which has aroused universal resonance.
This statue in Central Park was created by Adams Ward. In 1864, on the occasion of the centenary of Shakespeare's birth, a group of New York actors led by actor Edwin Booth, after obtaining permission, invited Ward, known as the "Elder of American Sculptors", to create the statue of Shakespeare and place it between two elm trees at the southern end of the boulevard.
"Shakespeare at dusk" is also Hope's only work that directly quotes literary figures, and its name and depiction of the scene are involuntarily reminiscent of Shakespeare's famous sentence describing autumn twilight:
You'll see this in me,
At that time, the scattered yellow leaves will hang on the branches,
Three or two pieces shivered in the cold wind,
There is no longer a sweet voice in the desolate music scene.
You will see in me at dusk,
The sunset fades away and gradually sinks into the western sky,
The night quickly took them all away,
Just like the substitute of the god of death locks everything into prison.
Hope paints a twilight scene, but the night after sunset becomes a little deeper. The death of Hope's mother in the year of Shakespeare at Dusk may have given Hope a different perspective on life, and in that year he became particularly fond of depicting the afterglow of the setting sun.
House at dusk
Hope's images are very stable, and his architectural landscapes are usually stable at the same time, giving people a sense of atmospheric solemnity. There are no characters in some pictures, and the pictures are neat, but they inexplicably reveal a strange sense of order. And in the picture of someone appearing, these characters always give people a sense of loneliness.
In the almost gray picture, the helplessness and decadence of the bowed head, the loneliness and melancholy of the back shadow, all seem to make people see an invisible pressure, but also let people immerse themselves in the empty and powerless space he created, silently feeling a strange charm.