“Even his sunniest pictures touch us where we are most vulnerable, and have a suggestion of melancholy being enacted.”

In 1956, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

In 1961, Jacqueline Kennedy chose one of Hopper’s paintings to decorate the White House.

He even appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, celebrated as a quintessential American realist.

Through all of this, Hopper remained unaffected and somewhat reclusive. He preferred the company of a few close artist friends and his wife, and he generally avoided interviews, letting Jo handle these whenever possible.

If reporters asked him about the meaning behind his paintings, he would often deflect, insisting that the truth was on the canvas and that he himself didn’t always know the deeper meanings.