This landscape was inspired by Edward Hopper’s painting of the hills and houses in South Truro, Massachusetts on Cape Cod. In 1930 Hopper and his wife Josephine spent their first summer in South Truro, renting a farmer’s cottage called Bird Cage Cottage, to which they would return for the next three summers. That same year Hopper’s House by the Railroad, is the first painting to enter the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection. In 1931 Hopper goes on to sell thirty artworks, of which thirteen are watercolors. After an especially rainy summer in 1933 the Hoppers went on the build their own cottage in the distant hillside seen here with space enough to paint indoors.

“Hopper’s Light” is an homage to an anecdote reported by the artist Raphael Soyer who visited Hopper one day in late summer. When he found that the artist had produced no paintings, Hopper explained that he was “waiting for November, when the shadows are longer and the landscape is more interesting, in fact, beautiful.”