Evening Wind

The etching Evening Wind is Edward Hopper's intimate glimpse of an ordinary event: a nude woman climbing into bed turns, sensing a breeze, towards an open window flanked by billowing white curtains. Hopper used the uninked areas of the off-white paper to suggest the blank window, curtains, bed sheets, and pillows, and highlights on the woman's skin. Careful inking of the densely cross-hatched passages on the etching plate resulted in the image's dark areas: the intensely black, shadow-filled corner at the left, where a pitcher and bowl rest on a bedside chest; the crevices of rumpled sheets; the piled bedding at the foot of the bed; and the window frame with the edge of exterior masonry visible beyond. Laboring to perfect this etching, Hopper evolved the image through eight states before achieving what he envisioned. In 1921, shortly after its completion, the print was shown at the Second International Printmakers Exhibition hosted by the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science, and Art (now the Los Angeles County Museum of Art), and in the winter exhibition at the National Academy of Design, in New York.

By presenting the solitary figure with her face hidden by her long dark hair as she looks toward the outdoor light, Hopper imbued this interior scene with a universal and timeless quality that transcends the specificity of daily life. The woman's pose and the bedroom setting recall John Sloan's etching Turning Out the Light (TF 1995.21), which inspired this print. Evening Wind displays a haunting beauty that is Hopper's own, however. It ranks as one of his graphic masterpieces and, along with his etching East Side Interior (TF 1994.22), as a classic example of his enigmatic treatment of the figure in an interior.