People in the Sun

The work of legendary American painter Edward Hopper—so redolent of moody solitude and Cape Cod sunlight sets the scene for fashion with a charmingly mid-century sense of E modernity. 

- MARLEY MARIUS

Edward and Josephine Hopper made a funny pair. He was from a small village on the Hudson River, while she was born and raised in New York City. Where he tended toward brooding introversion, she signed her letters, regardless of their content, “Cheerily, Jo.”

They fought bitterly, yet they stayed together for more than 40 years—from 1924 until his death in 1967 (she died in 1968)—dividing much of that time between a walk-up in downtown Manhattan and a house on Cape Cod. They were also both artists: Jo, like Ed, studied at the New York School of Art, and in 1923, when they were both in their early 40s, she helped him sell a painting, The Mansard Roof, to the Brooklyn Museum, where she was showing a suite of watercolors. (At the time, he was chiefly making his living as an illustrator.) And so began the rest of their lives.