Lonely City: Thoughts on Josephine Nivison Hopper

I'm reading this book called the Lonely City and it talks extensively about Edward Hopper, a very famous painter. After reading this and a few quick Google searches, I realize that very famous might be an understatement. He is referred to as the 'artist of loneliness' and his work is studied extensively to understand the phenomenen of urban loneliness.

In Lonely City too, Olivia Laing talks about his art and his technique and how his personal life was tied to his work and thus loneliness. Suddenly (for me), came a page about his domestic relationship with his wife Josephine Nivison Hopper. She was an artist too. Jo's diaries reveal that he often put her down and discouraged her from painting. She lost her identity as an artist. They didn't get married very young either, mind you. She was 'a 41 year old virgin' and he 42. They had a troubled marriage that sometimes came down to blows. Laing goes on to say how Jo used to pose for him, that she is the muse for (and a model in) a lot of his famous works. That maybe this was a way of him silencing her more, in paint - an expression of how lonely he was. And all I thought was, isn't her life more lonely?

Okay, I'm getting far ahead of myself. These are just some things I learnt about today. Her best work happened before marriage. She used to show and display her work at the best exhibitions. She used to sign her paintings as Jo Nivison but then switched to Jo N Hopper. She was adventurous. During a brief period she applied to with the US Army in France because she wanted adventure. Before that, she had a pretty stable job as a teacher. It didn't work out because of health reasons but so lively right? It is said that she was one of the new generation women: educated, financially independent and able to delay marriage in favour of work. Her paintings were always brightly coloured, even when Hopper and she used to paint the same scenes. She never wanted to paint flowers in the beginning though, because that is what she was expected to do as a woman painter. She bonded with her inanimate subjects, she gave them personal cute nicknames. She worked hard to earn to go to Europe, to study art. She loved the appreciation and laurels she earned for it. In fact, she is the one who inspired Hopper to use watercolours - a medium he later became famous for. His first sale was also due to her, when she advocated for his work to be exhibited at a showing. 

Her life after marriage though? Sounds sad, like she had to lose all of her identity. Like I mentioned before, she was often denigrated. She hated him for doing this to her art and he disliked the way she managed the house. He did not keep this a secret, making small illustrations mocking her. 

Perhaps her only mistake was that she chose companionship over a spirited, exciting and rewarding life. I think that maybe she didn't want to be a housemaker in the first place. Maybe she just married to spend her life doing art with this man. A man so uncommunicative and abhorrent of speech that he often left these kind of small illustrations for her when she wasn't around. 

They were a childless couple. She used to call her art (and her cat) her babies. That's why she always loved her art - how could she bastardize them? He in turn, was jealous of the cat (maybe also her art career?). After marriage though, she spent most of her time tending to him and his needs. Making sure his art career prospered, naming his paintings. She was extroverted, him introverted. He used to block her sometimes and not much speak to her in his creative moods. When they painted together, the driver seat was pulled up front to accomodate Hopper's long legs in the back and so she sat in her passenger seat squeezed. She wasn't sought out or interviewed. She left behind journals, diaries, letters and other correspondences which are still unpublished (unsure whether she wanted them to but still). When she died, she bequeathed both her husbands and her own work to the Whitney gallery. Believe it or not, they didn't deem her work to be important enough to be a part of their collection. A lot of it was just given away to hospitals and women clinics. A huge part of her work is lost to the world forever, only photographs remain. She even left the world overshadowed. I think that would be the real study of loneliness. To have lost so much. 

“What has become of my world,” Jo wrote in her diary. “It’s evaporated—I just trudge around in Eddie’s.”

Maybe she was okay with the connections she kept outside of home, maybe she was okay being the side character (there are records saying she's happy about it). Maybe they just kept hurting each other very bad. Maybe she never would have become Hopper-level famous even if this hadn't happened. But what if she had? What if inspite of not being famous, she would have enjoyed creating and being alone? What if she had not felt any emptiness on a professional and household level? Was all of her writing a study of this emptiness and frustration? Is that her unappreciated legacy?

The article/paper I read on her says to not see her as a victim. It says she kept her sunny and bright disposition and her love for art alive right till the end. But is that enough? Yes, maybe Hopper felt stifled and lonely too, but at least he got to leave behind a legacy and became famous for it. 

May all the Jo Nivisons of the world get that privilege.

Edit: Links:

https://annas-archive.org/md5/4fdb620c943a13405a9d64e0bcb4ea9f

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/02/26/jo-hopper-woman-sun-woman-shadow/

https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/scenes-from-edward-hoppers-marriage-2390/