Hopper's essence in Gloucester
AS IS JAW-droppingly evident in every room of the Edward Hopper exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, Hopper put his personal stamp on every area he painted in -- whether it was Cape Cod, Maine, or New York City. But one place in particular put its stamp on him. If you had built a city to capture the essence of Hopper's art, you couldn't have done better than Gloucester. And as you walk through the Gloucester room at the beginning of the exhibit, it's easy to see why the watercolors and oils he painted of the city marked a breakthrough for him.
Hopper spent four summers early in his career in Gloucester, but it wasn't the usual seaside vistas that attracted his attention. He painted fishing trawlers, not pleasure boats; working-class churches rather than architectural wonders; stately Victorians like "Haskell's House," not mansions.
In all of them he celebrated the same thing that even the casual visitor to the city notices -- the nobility of the commonplace. There is beauty everywhere you look, though not the more picturesque beauty he found in Maine and the Cape. Looking down from Winchester Court in "Gloucester Roofs," you don't get the nice view of the town and the water that you do in reality, but rather an almost abstract jumble of houses.
But look closer, and it's not a jumble and decidedly not abstract. These houses are lived in; they're not symbolic of anything except a certain warmth and mystery. With all the talk about the loneliness in Hopper's painting, there isn't enough credit given to Hopper the romantic. The Gloucester water colors practically invite you into these homes and make you curious about who lives there.
You get the feeling that you'd like these offstage people, much as when you walk around Gloucester you're struck by the way that artists live side by side with fishermen, how white collars mix with blue. There's nothing of the theme park about Gloucester, as there is to parts of Rockport. Just as there's a lack of artifice in Hopper's art, there's a lack of pretension in Gloucester's beauty and a lack of ideology in the way that people go about their business. "The men of this city . . . are never / doctrinaires," wrote Charles Olson in his epic work set in Gloucester, "The
Is this over-romanticizing? Perhaps. It's easy for the visitor to overlook the troubled times for the fishing industry in Gloucester or the current debates over whether the city should be more tourist-friendly.
Still, the spirits of Olson and of Walt Whitman do seem to be woven into its fabric, fueled by the sights, sounds, and smells of the sea air. There's no shortage of wonderful restaurants in Gloucester -- the Franklin Café, Passports, Duckworth's Bistrot. But I've always been partial, when the music's not too loud, to the Studio on Rocky Neck, with its enchanting views of the harbor, its easy-going mix of townies and tourists, the fried clams that go perfectly with either beer or chardonnay.
The mood is more convivial than in Hopper's urban paintings, certainly, but there's a mixture of romance and reality in both. Those two women in the corner talking about love or betrayal at the Studio aren't that far removed from the two women in "Chop Suey."
Another place that has a Hopper-like symbiotic relationship with the city is the Gloucester Stage Company. Playwright and former artistic director Israel Horovitz has used the theater as a place to develop his own plays, many of which, such as "North Shore Fish" and "Barking Sharks," are set in Gloucester and deal with residents dependent on the fishing industry.
Horovitz could use a little more of Hopper in his plays; he has a tendency to go for the grand gesture and let nuance get away from him. But then we could all use a little more of Hopper's perspective in our lives. To see the beauty in the everyday is a remarkable gift. A trip to the MFA's Hopper exhibit -- or one to Gloucester -- renews that lesson with every visit.
Ed Siegel is a freelance writer. 