The Princeton Hoppers are in the Princeton University Art Museum. I look with Laura Giles, Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Princeton University Art Museum, at Princeton’s three Hoppers watercolors. Universalist Church, Trawler and Telegraph Pole and Lime Rock Railroad were all given to the museum by Clifton R. Hall. ‘He always seems to project this great loneliness,’ she says of Hopper.
Watercolors
Trenton Hopper: A Boat Out of Water
The Trenton Hopper is literally a boat out of water. Trenton, New Jersey is home to the New Jersey State Museum. The New Jersey State Museum’s Fine Arts Collection primarily focuses on New Jersey artists. However, it has a sprinkling of other works of art for comparative purposes. Included in this sample is, of course, the Trenton Hopper, Boat and Cliff (1929).
Chapel Hill Hopper – A Watercolor Without a Home
I find Chapel Hill’s Hopper nestled amidst verdant forest. Chapel Hill is a college town of the University of North Carolina (UNC). On Chapel Hill’s main street, amputee panhandlers and drunk manic depressives alternately yell at each other, passers-by and police.
Greenville Hopper – Baptistry of St John
After Atlanta, it’s a wet, twisting Appalachian road that leads to Greenville, South Carolina and its Hopper picture.
A Truly American Road to Greenville
The road bisects man-made Tennessee Valley Authority lakes which spill into whitewater rapids. Thereafter, it leads to north Georgian escapes where wealthy Atlantans sit on deck chairs by the lake. Here, they sip mint juleps and watch their neighbors jet by in speedboats.
The road continues through the isolated, age-old poverty of western North Carolina. Not unpleasantly, the asphalt is shrouded by barbecue smoke and black diesel exhaust.
It is a beautiful road, a truly American one. At the end of it lies the small, quintessentially Southern town of Greenville, South Carolina. The main street in Grenville is called Main Street and is lined by old trees.
