Hopper's Narrative Influence

Careful viewers will note that the three images in the preceding blog post were all works by Edward Hopper.  Hopper (1882-1967) was an American artist known for his realistic scenes of ordinary life.  According to Wikipedia he "created subdued drama out of commonplace subjects layered with a poetic meaning, inviting narrative interpretations".  Sounds good to me, especially that last bit about inviting narrative interpretations.  I believe strongly that art and story are two sides of a coin.  The best art, like great model railroads, tells a story or sometimes raises questions in the viewers mind that lead to a "narrative interpretation".  

A quick search of the Model Railroader archive will reveal a few brief mentions of Edward Hopper.  Most notable is an article by John Armstrong in which he recreates, in model form, the scene depicted in Hopper's painting "The Nighthawks".  To honor Armstrong a painting was made by railroad artist Ted Rose which included the grand old master himself standing trackside next to a Canandaigua Southern steam engine with the Nighthawks scene in the background.  Think about it; a fictional scene from a famous painting recreated on a freelanced model railroad, finally depicted full circle in a painting.  Narrative indeed.

But perhaps lesser known - because it is entirely my speculation - is this scene, shown on Earl Smallshaw's Middletown and Mystic Mines railroad:

Now, I can't prove it, primarily because Smallshaw has gone on to that great roundhouse in the sky, but I suspect what we're looking at is a nod to this painting:

House by the Railroad, Edward Hopper, 1925

Hopper's painting, indeed many of his railroad paintings, were made in the first quarter of the twentieth century, the time frame of Smallshaw's M&MM.  Note the use of negative space in both images to highlight the subject and draw its contours into sharp relief.  On the Middletown & Mystic Mines this house was the home of Fenton Farnsworth, founder of the M&MM.  As the story goes, he would often step out onto his porch to watch the 8:25 doodlebug go by.  According to the photo's caption in the May 1982 Model Railroader, "Just before his retirement he had this quaint Victorian home built on a knoll and as close to the right-of-way as possible so he could keep an eye on his creation."  Narrative.  Art inspires a story.  

Smallshaw's model, by the way, was a Classic Miniatures Leadville House.  Not an exact match to the house in Hopper's painting but it captures the spirit.  Neither is the supposed real-life inspiration for the painting a match, attributed to a home in New York which also only vaguely looks like the house in Hopper's painting.  But here's yet a third house with a connection (so I'm led to believe) to Hopper's "House by the Railroad":

I selected this one from the many views available on the internet because of the lighting which so closely matches Hopper's work.  Hitchcock reportedly liked the look of Hopper's painting and was inspired to create the Bates Mansion for his film "Psycho".  Supposedly.  But such supposition is part of the fun of "narrative interpretation" isn't it?  Sometimes not knowing is more interesting.

As I've built structures for dioramas over the last two years (see nmrbo22 and nmrbo23 tags for more) I've enjoyed creating narratives around each.  How old are these buildings?  Who might live there?  How can the structure itself tell the story?  What clues can I give the viewer to help discover that narrative?  In the case of Smallshaw's and Hitchcock's Victorian structures we're provided a narrative and given a larger context in which that story is placed.  

But Hopper's masterpiece has no such context beyond the railroad tracks in the foreground.  The structure itself offers no clues beyond an approximate age based on architectural details and the date of Hopper's painting, 1925.   Art critics can and do speculate about the narrative, but they have no more corner on that market than you or I when it comes to imagination.  Perhaps the best we can do is to be inspired enough to recreate our own House by the Railroad and maybe even invite our viewers to cast their own narrative interpretations.