How Jo Nivison Hopper, long known as wife and model of Edward Hopper, is being rediscovered as an artistic force in her own right:
. Photo by Paul Mutino, courtesy of the Edward Hopper House Museum and Study Center, Nyack, New York.
That led her to take a closer look at the archives at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, where Jo had left the bulk of the couple’s holdings, including many examples of her own work, in a bequest. When they started courting in the summer of 1923, Ed was making a living as a commercial artist. He had not sold a painting since the Armory show in 1913. Jo, however, was showing her work, mostly watercolors, as early as 1914, in group exhibitions in New York City with artists now acknowledged as American modernist masters—among them Stuart Davis, Charles Demuth, Mauriece Prendergast, Marguerite and William Zorach, and Charles Burchfield.
Jo and Ed had opposite personalities and temperaments, but they shared many common interest such as French literature and culture, and a love for the theater and film. They were also avid readers and spent many hours together attending art exhibitions and socializing with fellow artists, patrons, and dealers. So yes, they scrapped, but in Jo’s writings there is abundant evidence of their love and affection, and devotion to one another.
She did, at times, champion her own work after her marriage, but again, it was less frequently. Jo did lament that after his success Ed did not do more to promote her work—but he was not outgoing by temperament. He could barely promote his own work, much less hers. There are also records of him making disparaging remarks about her work and women artists in general—an attitude shared by many men of that era. He did on occasion praise her efforts, however.
The works in the Nyack exhibition are for the most part works that are of exhibition quality. When Jo gave them to Reverend Sanborn, many were mounted in the mats that were used when they were exhibited. Some of the Whitney watercolors, the best ones, were also matted, but many other works were loose sketches or studies, works that came from the Hoppers’ home and studio at Washington Square North after the Hoppers had died, and were never intended for exhibition.
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