Evening Wind
Edward Hopper
1882 Nyack – New York 1967
Evening Wind 1921
etching on wove paper; 6 7/8 x 8 1/4 inches (sheet: 9 1/2 x 10 5/8 inches)
signed in pencil at lower right Edward Hopper; annotated by the artist on verso:
etching $35 / “The Evening Wind” / Edward Hopper /3 Wash. Square / New York
Levin 77; Zigrosser 9
provenance
private collection
Notes:
In a footnote to Zigrosser’s The Etchings of Edward Hopper he refers to Evening Wind as having seven states; this is corroborated by the Philadelphia Museum web site which shows their seven states of The Evening Wind (Zigrosser was curator of prints at Philadelphia). These may be progress proofs, one to a state; we have not encountered other proof states of the print, and know of no definitive documentation of the states of Hopper prints. In all likelihood, then, our impression is of the definitive state. The drawing for the print is at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Gail Levin, in her Edward Hopper: The Complete Prints, writes that his later etchings were often carefully worked out in preliminary drawings, and notes “The evolution of Evening Wind to etching from preparatory drawing has meant a sharper focus on the nude woman in the foreground through elimination of the distracting definition of background details…” (p. 12). The basic composition from the drawing, and through the states, however, was unchanged.