Morning Sun

Well, I really believe that no one presented the solitude of the modern man like he did. At the same time, his paintings are so cinematic; maybe this is why we feel so close to them. In Morning Sun, the woman modeled after Hopper's wife, Jo, faces the sun impassively and seemingly lost in thought. The bare wall and the elevation of the room above the street also suggest the bleakness and solitude of impersonal urban life. 

Much of Hopper’s early success can be attributed to Jo, who was also his manager. By the time the couple married in 1924, both were in their 40s. Jo, a painter and actress, was the more established of the two. In 1923 she was invited to participate in a group exhibition of American and European artists at the Brooklyn Museum, and encouraged the curators to include her husband’s work as well. The exhibition resulted in the first museum acquisition of his work.

Jo was Hopper’s only female model from 1923 until Hopper’s death in 1967, though he never considered his paintings to be portraits of her, using her as a stand-in for “any woman.” At the time of the painting of Morning Sun, Jo was 69 years old, yet she is rendered in a rather idealized, youthful depiction.

P.S. Here are a few more words on loneliness in Hopper's art and some stirring paintings (and here is the famous Nighthawks in a lot of memes).  ;-)