PICTURING AMERICA ARTWORK, ESSAYS, AND ACTIVITIES70
The sunlight illuminating House by the Railroad is bright enough
to cast deep shadows on the stately Victorian mansion, but not
to chase away an air of sadness. The painting expresses Edward
Hopper’s central theme: the alienation of modern life. Instead
of happy, anecdotal pictures celebrating the energy and pros-
perity of the Roaring Twenties, Hopper portrayed modern life
with unsentimental scenes of either physical or psychological
isolation. Most are set in the city, where people often look
uncomfortable and out of place. Others, like House by the
Railroad, picture solitary buildings in commonplace landscapes.
Hopper’s House by the Railroad is symbolic of the loss that is
felt when modern progress leaves an agrarian society behind.
The single focus of the painting is a large gray house in an
imported French style. Although Hopper customarily worked
from life, he invented this house based on some he came
across in New England and others he may have seen on Paris
boulevards. This architectural style became fashionable in
America during the mid-nineteenth century. Its hallmark is a
double-pitched roof pierced with dormer windows that give
height and light to the attic level. From this we might assume
that the once-grand Victorian house in Hopper’s painting had
been built for a large family with the means to construct a resi-
dence in the latest style. If to our eyes these antique features
lend the house a certain charm, in Hopper’s time it would have
appeared a clumsy relic from an awkward era — “an ugly
house,” as one critic phrased it, “in an ugly place.”
Like the house, the site once may have been more attractive.
The tall, hooded windows must have overlooked a landscape;
the double veranda and tower were presumably positioned to
take advantage of a view, probably over miles of lush country-
side. Now the many windows appear tightly closed, with
shades mostly drawn, as if they have become obsolete for a
landscape that holds little to admire. It is possible that the house
has been deserted; in any event, nature’s absence is also pro-
nounced, similar to the industrial scene in Charles Sheeler’s
American Landscape (see 15-A). House by the Railroad might
even be considered the domestic complement to Sheeler’s
work, although Hopper seems not to have felt Sheeler’s con-
tradictory attitude toward modern life. Whether he regarded
the house as lastingly beautiful or hopelessly old-fashioned,
Hopper presents it as an enduring emblem of the past.
The two themes of modern progress and historical continuity
come together in the second man-made feature of the painting,
a railroad track running so close to the house that a passing train
would have rattled its windows. From our curiously low view-
point, the track appears to slice through the lower edge of the
structure — or, to regard it in a different way, to become part of
the house itself, a new foundation for American life. An endur-
ing sign of progress, the railroad was the primary agent of
industrial change. It enlarged existing cities and created new
ones on the frontier. It also provided Americans with unprece-
dented mobility, allowing them to explore other regions of the
country. But as Albert Bierstadt (see 8-A) observed in the previ-
ous century, the railroad came at the cost of the American
wilderness. Even earlier in the nineteenth century, Thomas
Cole had considered the consequences of American migration
from the early settlements on the East Coast. As The Oxbow
(see 5-A) suggests, a well-tended countryside held practical and
aesthetic advantages but forever altered the unspoiled landscape
that was America’s pride.
Hopper rejected European influences, maintaining that
American art should capture the character of the nation. Like
Cole and Bierstadt, he expresses the tension between nature
and culture. Although railroad tracks are typically associated with
the noise, speed, and rapid change of modern life, this scene is
curiously still and silent, as if the rush of industrialization has
passed it by. Hopper, working in the period between the two
world wars, appears to have found little to celebrate in the
urbanization of America, which had destroyed its original, pas-
toral aspect. Here, the railroad track is the color of earth, taking
the place of the stream, valley, or farmland that once formed
the background of American culture.
EDWARD HOPPER [1882–1967]
House by the Railroad, 1925
16-A Edward Hopper (1882– 1967), House by the Railroad,
1925. Oil on canvas, 24 x 29 in. (61 x 73.7 cm.). Given
anonymously (3.1930). The Museum of Modern Art, New
York. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/ Licensed
by SCALA / Art Resource, New York.
16a
