?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
EDWARD HOPPER The Enchantment of Don Quixote (after Gustave Doré).
Pencil and white gouache heightening on cream laid paper, circa 1900-05. 189x136 mm; 7 1/4x5 1/4 inches. Initialed in pencil, lower right recto.
Provenance: Estate of the artist, New York; Josephine N. Hopper, the artist's widow, New York; Reverend and Mrs. Arthayer R. Sanborn, Nyack; Alexander Gallery, New York; Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York, with the label; private collection, New York; private collection, Pennsylvania.
Exhibited: "Edward Hopper Drawings: The Poetry of Solitude," Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga, September 9-October 15, 1995; "The Early Drawings of Edward Hopper," Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York, November 4-25, 1995, number 18 (illustrated); "Small and Beautiful: The Issue of Scale," Eaton Fine Art, Inc., West Palm Beach, November 7, 1997-January 2, 1998.
Published: Levin, Edward Hopper, A Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1995, volume 1, page 106, figure I-7 b (illustrated); The Early Drawings of Edward Hopper, New York, 1995, catalogue number 18.
Hopper (1882-1967) made this detail study after a design by Gustave Doré (1832-1883) that appeared in an illustrated edition of Don Quixote by Cervantes from around 1880. The subject clearly interested Hopper, who produced at least two other drawings of the famous literary character from around this time period, which are now in the Whitney Museum of American Art (Josephine N. Hopper Bequest), New York, as well as the etching, Don Quixote, 1915-18 (Levin 12).
One of the motivators behind Hopper's interest in European art was his teacher during the early 1900s, Robert Henri (1865-1929). As an art instructor, Henri preached originality and urged Hopper's further study of European art. "Hopper had heard Henri praise the work of European artists such as Daumier, Courbet, Degas, Manet, Renoir, Rembrandt, Hals, Velásquez, Goya, and El Greco, and like so many of Henri's students, felt he should travel to Europe to see the works of these great masters firsthand. So, with his parents' help, he left for Paris in October 1906 and did not return until the following August," (Levin, Edward Hopper as Illustrator, New York, 1979, page 11).
