Night in the Park

In Edward Hopper's etching Night in the Park, a man sitting alone on a bench in a deserted park at night reads a newspaper by the light of a streetlamp indicated by the white orb at the top of the image, left of center. This realistic scene of quiet solitude within the city also evokes a sense of isolation accentuated by the ominously black, thick shrubbery lurking outside the lamp's glow. To represent the intangible murkiness of night darkness, Hopper created an image that is almost completely covered with black lines; he never used tonal intaglio processes like aquatint. He achieved the deep black tones in this print by heavily inking the densely scribbled lines and cross-hatching on his etched plate. For the bright white of the illuminated newspaper and pavement surrounding the man's feet, he wiped away any ink on the unetched portions of the plate before printing. Night in the Park is now regarded as one of Hopper's most successful etchings for its quietly ominous air achieved in part through dramatic light-and-dark contrasts and the plunging diagonal of the nearly deserted park benches.

The solitary figure appears frequently in Hopper's paintings, drawings, and prints, as demonstrated here and in his etching Night Shadows (TF 1995.7). The artist exhibited Night in the Park widely: within a year of its printing, impressions were exhibited at New York's National Academy of Design and Whitney Studio Club; the sixth annual exhibition of the Brooklyn Society of Etchers at the Brooklyn Museum; the Chicago Society of Etchers; and the Third International Printmakers Exhibition at the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science, and Art (now the Los Angeles County Museum of Art).

Ville et campagne: les artistes américains, 1870–1920 (The City and the Country: American Perspectives, 1870–1920), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venues: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–July 15, 1999; Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, December 10, 1999–May 7, 2000 (in modified form). [exh. cat.]

America’s Cool Modernism: O’Keeffe to Hopper, Terra Foundation for American Art and the Ashmolean Museum of Art & Archaeology, Oxford, UK (organizers.) Venue: Ashmolean Museum of Art & Archaeology, Oxford, UK, March 23, 2018–July 22, 2018 [exh. cat.]

Zigrosser, Carl. "The Etchings of Edward Hopper." In Prints: Thirteen Illustrated Essays on the Art of the Print Selected for the Print Council of America, edited by Carl Zigrosser. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962. No. 20, pp. 155–73.

Levin, Gail. Edward Hopper: The Complete Prints. (exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art). New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company in association with the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1979. Pl. 80 (etching), pl. 81 (drawing for etching).

Levin, Gail. Edward Hopper: The Art and the Artist. (exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art). New York and London, England: W. W. Norton & Company in association with the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1980. Text p. 20; fig. 21.

Carey, Frances and Antony Griffiths. American Prints 1879–1979, Catalogue of an Exhibition at the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. (exh. cat., British Museum). London, England: Trustees of the British Museum, 1980. No. 62, p. 33.

Jacobowitz, Ellen S. and George H. Marcus. American Graphics 1860–1940, Selected from the Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. (exh. cat., Philadelphia Museum of Art). Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1982. No. 52, p. 55.

Bourguignon, Katherine M., Lauren Kroiz, and Leo G. Mazow. America’s Cool Modernism: O’Keeffe to Hopper. Oxford, United Kingdom: Ashmolean Museum of Art & Archaeology–University of Oxford, 2018. Ill. p. 139, cat. no. 38 (color).