Landscape With Automobile (Study)

  • 1962
  • charcoal on paper
  • 8-15/16 x x 11 inches
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Hopper loved to drive, and the road, along with people on the move, figured prominently as one of his motifs throughout his career. The paintings form a continuum, progressing from one to the next - particularly, we think of Gas, 1940, Route 6, Eastham, 1941, Solitude #56, 1944 and Four Lane Road, 1956. Road and Trees feels like it is just down the road from the station in Gas.

This is Hopper’s fifth to last painting.. It seems probable that this drawing is an early idea for Road and Trees, with the car as the traditional narrative element. He pares it down to an empty landscape. Ahead next year is Sun In An Empty Room, which he said had been originally conceived with a figure that he
eliminated because it was too big.

 

Road and Trees, 1962, oil on canvas, 34 x 60 inches

Private Collection