The student who not only weighs positive achievement but the possibilities for future achievement must have looked upon the etched work of Edward Hopper with respect from the beginning. It had its crudities but it was always honest. Mr. Hopper never succeeded in uniting himself as with hoops of steel to the life of the poor people upon whom he gazed from his studio windows—studios in Washington Square are admirably placed to induce broadmindedness upon the part of their occupants—but there was no question as to the sympathy he extended upon them. He was not a Millet agonizing over the injustices of the peasants, but he was sincerely sorry for their lot and incidentally noted that it had its picturesque moments.

The something that turns an honest recorder into an inspired one had not occurred to him. The assurance that can be felt in a first rate Seymour-Haden etching was not Mr. Hopper's, neither in the identification with the subject nor in an abandonment to the eloquence of the etched line. But this undeniable honesty of his, if not the whole genius, is at least a long step toward it and predisposed most of the critics to be his friend.

All of these latter will now be gratified by a little exploit of Mr. Hopper's in another medium, water color, in which he appears to plunge forward. He doesn't plunge quite to absolute greatness, but he advances to a position where others than hopeful critics must consider him. In other words, he engages the attention of collectors and the public in general. In the F. K. M. Rehn Galleries the group of studies made by Mr. Hopper last summer in Gloucester, Mass. have not only aroused Mr. Rehn to a pitch beyond his usual enthusiasm, which is always considerable, but has so excited his clients that at this writing more than half the water colors have been sold.

These purchasers may think my own enthusiasm, which is also considerable, is, in spite of its quantity, coolish in quality, due to the fact that I insist on absolute greatness. But that would be merely impatience upon their part. There is lots of time yet for greatness, and in the meantime I think it pretty fine that Mr. Hopper should be interesting.

Henry McBride, "Edward Hopper's Water Colors Prove Interesting—Also Sell," New York Sun (25 October 1924), p. 4.