VERSO
Label, Cadres Anciens Dorure d’Art, Geneva, Switzerland
Label, The Owings Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Shoshone Cliffs, Wyoming is recorded in the Edward Hopper Catalogue Raisonné as reference number W-335.

In 1941, Edward Hopper and his wife, Jo, took an extended road trip to the West during which they stopped at Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming. Spending eight days there, Hopper began this watercolor at the base of the Holy City rock formations, capturing the dramatic red sandstone rocks situated above the Shoshone River.

One of the larger works on paper Hopper ever painted, Shoshone Cliffs, Wyoming is one of only four paintings that Hopper created in Wyoming with one featured in the collection of the Whitney Museum of Art and another in the Anschutz Collection. A Western American masterwork of light, color, shadow, and water, the painting is a beautiful representation of the West and Wyoming by one of the very best artists to ever paint in the West.

Hopper biographer Lloyd Goodrich wrote, “He [Hopper] liked the blazing sun of summer noon, projecting sharp patterns of light and shadow; or again, the clear raking sunlight of early morning or late afternoon, striking one side of objects and leaving the other in deep shadow – a light that models forms roundly and produces a dramatic play of light and shade. In his landscapes movement is created by light more than by the forms themselves. Light streams into the picture, falls on its motionless forms, and becomes a dynamic element in the whole pictorial concept.”

PROVENANCE
Eugene D. Hopper, gifted to
The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio, 1954
Christie’s, New York, New York, 2007
Private collection, Santa Fe, New Mexico

EXHIBITED
Twelfth Biennial: International Water Color Exhibition, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York, 1943
Water Colors by Edward Hopper, Frank K. M. Rehn Gallery, New York, New York, 1943
Works by Newly Elected Members and Recipients of Arts and Letters Grants, The American Academy of Arts and Letters and The National Institute of Arts and Letters, New York, New York, 1945
The Forty-third Annual Philadelphia Water Color and Print Exhibition, and the Forty-fourth Annual Exhibition of Miniatures, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1945
Amerikanische Meister des Aquarells, Albertina, Vienna, Austria, 1949
Edward Hopper Retrospective, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York, 1950
Watercolors by Edward Hopper With a Selection of His Etchings, The Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire, 1959
Ten Americans: 1860-1960, Art Institute of Zanesville, Zanesville, Ohio, 1960
Paintings from The Butler Institute of American Art, Miami University Center, Oxford, Ohio, 1961
A Retrospective Exhibition of Oils and Watercolors by Edward Hopper, University of Arizona Art Gallery, Tucson, Arizona, 1963
Edward Hopper, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York, 1964
Five Distinguished American Artists: Dickinson, Hofmann, Hopper, Shahn, Soyer, Art and Home Center, Exhibition Grounds, Syracuse, New York, 1965
Contemporary American Realism, The Canton Art Institute, Canton, Ohio, 1968
American Painting: 1900 to Present, Tyler Museum of Art, Tyler, Texas, 1971
Ten Americans, Andrew Crispo Gallery, New York, New York, 1974
Forty Watercolors from the Collection of The Butler Institute of American Art, The Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts, New Castle, Pennsylvania, 1982

LITERATURE
Lloyd Goodrich, Edward Hopper, New York, 1971, p. 251, illustrated
Sixty Years of Collecting American Art: An Index to the Permanent Collection, The Butler Institute of American Art, 1979, pp. 20, 61, illustrated
The Great Artists: Their Lives, Works and Inspiration, Part 88: Hopper, Marshall Cavendish, 1986, p. 2793, illustrated
Irene S. Sweetkind, ed., Master Paintings from the Butler Institute of American Art, Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1994, p. 262, illustrated
Irene S. Sweetkind, ed., The Butler Institute of American Art: Index of the Permanent Collection, Butler Institute of American Art, 1997, p. 89, illustrated
Virginia M. Mecklenburg, Edward Hopper: The Watercolors, W. W. Norton & Co., 1999, pp. 142, 161
Gail Levin, The Complete Watercolors of Edward Hopper, Whitney Museum of American Art, 2001, p. 204, illustrated
Gail Levin, Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography, Rizzoli, 2007, p. 341

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