Hopper, Rockwell, Salinger

In 1930 Edward Hopper painted a work that he titled “Early Sunday Morning,” and it depicts a street of stores and second floor apartments like one might see in Brooklyn. The buildings are painted square to the viewer with the sidewalk and street running straight across the bottom of the picture, and a band of sky running straight across the top.

About 1945 J.D.Salinger, wrote this description in “The Catcher In The Rye.” It also describes a city street on a Sunday morning. Here is the passage.

“This family that you could tell just came from church were walking rightin front of me - a father, a mother, and a little kid about six years old. They looked sort of poor. The father had on one of those pearl-gray hats that poor guys wear a lot when they want to look sharp”

In 1953 Norman Rockwell combined those two images, the family
going to church and the Hopper Street Scene to do the April 1953 Post cover called “Walking to church,” the street is just the same, and the man actually has on a pearl-gray hat.

Here is my version of this idea, it takes more from Hopper, and less from Rockwell, my view is from that time of night when the sky is just beginning to get light in the east. It is still dark out and there are a few lights on as some people are just up and getting ready to go to work.

This is a little painting on paper, all the lights were put in with a brush and white paint. I wanted to differentiate between the light which comes from a light source, such as the street lamps, and the light which is reflected, such as the light on the pavement. In order to do this, after all the lights were in I put a yellow glaze over the entire painting and then put the lights back in with pure white for the lamp lights. In this way the dots of light from the street lamps are a little brighter than the other lights. But what about that lit window in the upper right, isn’t that a light source? It was, but I had to draw the shade, as someone was getting dressed in there.

Dimensions: 5” x 7”
Materials: Acrylic on water color paper
Signature: Along the bottom edge: Richard Britell , April 5, 2002