This compelling double-sided drawing sheet exemplifies Edward Hopper’s methodical approach to composition and his enduring fascination with American interiors and the natural world. From the collection of his wife Josephine “Jo” Hopper, this work demonstrates the careful preparatory process that characterized Hopper’s creative practice throughout his career.

The sheet features two distinct studies on the front and an additional composition on the verso. The top study presents an interior scene—a room rendered with quick, decisive strokes in red crayon. The composition captures the essential geometry of an architectural space, with windows allowing light to penetrate the interior, a hallmark of Hopper’s lifelong preoccupation with illumination and atmosphere. The spare furnishings and emphasis on architectural structure reflect his exploration of interior spaces and the relationship between contained rooms and the world beyond. 

The lower register features three studies of deer, executed with confident, economical lines. These animal sketches demonstrate Hopper’s versatility as a draftsman and his habit of filling sketchbook pages with diverse observations. The deer are captured in various poses—standing, alert, and in motion—revealing the artist’s keen eye for natural form and movement. Such studies of wildlife were less common in Hopper’s mature work but reflect his summers spent on Cape Cod and his broader engagement with the American landscape.

The drawing on the reverse side, visible in the framed photograph, appears to show a solitary figure in an interior space, further emphasizing Hopper’s recurrent themes of isolation and introspection. 

Edward Hopper’s drawing practice was fundamental to his artistic process. His drawings reveal the continually evolving relationship between observation and invention in his work. Similar studies from his sketchbooks can be found at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, which holds over 2,500 Hopper drawings. These have enabled scholars to trace how the artist synthesized elements from disparate locations and observations to create his iconic compositions.

Hopper described his on-site sketching as working “from the fact,” an effort to collect details directly from the world around him. However, as his career progressed, his paintings increasingly became syntheses of multiple observations, memory, and imagination rather than representations of specific places. These preparatory studies served various functions: some were detailed compositional blueprints, while others captured essential pictorial structures or specific details like furniture arrangements or lighting effects. For major paintings like Nighthawks (1942), Hopper produced as many as nineteen preparatory studies, meticulously working out every element of the final composition.

This sheet, with its economical yet assured handling of the medium, exemplifies Hopper’s mastery of crayon and his ability to capture the essence of a scene with minimal means. Whether sketching an interior space that would inform paintings exploring themes of isolation and transience, or quickly recording observations of wildlife, Hopper demonstrated the disciplined eye and hand of an artist who was deeply attuned to the relationship of the self to the world. 

The dual nature of this sheet—combining architectural studies with natural subjects—reflects the breadth of Hopper’s observational practice and his restless exploration of the American scene in all its manifestations, from the stark geometry of interior rooms to the organic forms of animals in the landscape. Such studies were not merely technical exercises but essential steps in Hopper’s process of transforming everyday observations into the poetic, enigmatic images that have made him one of America’s most iconic realist painters of the

20th century.