I have admired Edward Hopper’s body of work for many years. But the first time I noticed the problems of linear perspective in his work was about five years ago, when I constructed a close copy of Chop Suey (1929.) I was struck by apparent errors of perspective and scale.
More recently, an interpretive copy of Rooms by the Sea (1951) presented similar problems in its construction. The foreground is too large relative to the background, and there is a disruption of linear perspective from one room to another. Hopper was certainly a gifted draftsman and accomplished at the complexities of linear perspective, so what gives? His unusual viewpoints are a drawing challenge to already complicated scenes, and consider how often his viewpoint seems to be from atop a ladder. He was a tall fellow, but not that tall.
So I began to review my collection of Hopper books, and sure enough, many of his pictures seem to have instances of perspective and scale that do not demonstrate a unified system. But neither are they overtly or subtly Cezanne-like or cubist in their handling of illusionistic devices. In fact, his pictures remind me more of the handlings by Bonnard (pre-Hopper) and Diebenkorn (post-Hopper.)
My next hunch was that Hopper was working with memory and observation, expression and naturalism. This hunch was confirmed by reading that Rolf Renner calls out Hopper’s “idiosyncratic use of perspective.” Renner claims that Hopper owes a debt to Edgar Degas, for the “French painter’s concept of the transformation of the real through imagination and memory.” (Renner, 2000, page 86)