Cape Cod Feature

The Outer Cape has inspired thousands of acclaimed artists, but perhaps none is more closely associated with its serene yet romantic landscape than Edward Hopper, the esteemed realist painter who lived in Truro for most of the last four decades of his life. Quiet Truro, with its peaceful, sandy lanes, suited the introspective Hopper perfectly.

Hopper, born in Nyack, New York, in 1882, enjoyed little commercial or critical success before middle age. Early in his career, he worked as a commercial illustrator to support himself while living in New York City's Greenwich Village. It was during the 1920s, after his marriage to Josephine Nivison, that Hopper achieved marked success as both an oil painter and watercolorist and became known for his starkly realistic scenes, often depicting public places filled with people, such as his most iconic work, Nighthawks.

Edward and Josephine first summered in Truro in 1930, and a few years later they designed their own Truro home. Much of Hopper's work conveyed the emptiness and alienation of big-city life, and although his Cape paintings were similar in their simplicity, they nevertheless offered a slightly more hopeful vision, if for no other reason than their tendency to focus more on the region's sensuous luminosity than strictly on lonely or bored people.

Most famously, Hopper's Truro work captured the undulating auburn hills along Pamet Road in his 1930 work Corn Hill (Truro, Cape Cod). Other notable paintings that portray the Outer Cape include Cape Cod Evening (1939), Route 6 Eastham (1941), Martha McKeen of Wellfleet (1944), and Cape Cod Morning (1950).