Edward and Josephine Hopper in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, 1927.
Photograph: The Arthayer R. Sanborn Hopper Collection Trust (2005). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

In the summer of 1927 Edward and Josephine Hopper had been married for three years. They had just purchased their first car, a used Dodge, enabling them to drive from New York City for their summer excursion  into New England. That year they went first to Cape Elizabeth in Maine, where the photo above was taken.

From Maine the Hoppers traveled to the Whitney Studio Club’s summer establishment in Charlestown, New Hampshire. From Charlestown they made their first trips into Vermont, crossing the Connecticut River — the boundary between New Hampshire and Vermont — and driving into the area near Bellows Falls.

To read more, follow this link to my article in AFAnews.com, originally published in the Spring 2013 issue of Antiques &  Fine Art Magazine. This piece includes beautiful reproductions of Hopper’s Vermont watercolors and two of his drawings, along with my own photos of sites along the White River in Royalton, Vermont.  Enjoy — and for the full version of the story, read my book, Edward Hopper in Vermont!

This spring, as Vermont’s maple sugaring season came and went, I thought about the sugar house on the South Royalton farm where Edward and Jo Hopper boarded in the summers of 1937 and ’38. This is the sugar house — then owned by Irene and Bob Slater –  that is the subject of Hopper’s watercolor, Vermont Sugar House. You will see this Hopper painting often this summer, online and in print, as the signature image and poster for the upcoming exhibition, Edward Hopper in Vermont, at the Middlebury College Museum of Art.

Edward Hopper, Vermont Sugar House, 1938. Watercolor on paper, 14 x 20 inches. Collection of Louis Bacon.

The Slaters’ sugar house on Wagon Wheels farm, early 1940s. Courtesy of Robert Alan Slater.

What struck me this spring, as the wood stoves were fired up in sugar houses around Vermont and sap was being boiled down to make maple syrup, was that Hopper had painted the Slaters’ sugar house during its downtime; he never saw it operating. In the late summer of 1938 Edward and Jo Hopper were on vacation in Vermont, and so was the sugar house, a workhorse structure that would remain quiescent until the sap ran again the following spring. What Hopper knew of the building’s function would have been hearsay, gleaned from conversations with the Slaters, dairy farmers for whom maple syrup and candy provided essential additional income during the Great Depression.

The label on Irene Slater’s maple bonbon box carries a drawing of the farmhouse made by Edward Hopper, according to the Slater family. The original drawings, one in pencil and one in pen and ink, are now in a private collection.

As boarding tourists — another source of supplemental income for the farm — the  Hoppers ate all of their meals with the Slater family, and most likely they enjoyed maple syrup on their breakfast pancakes and savored Irene’s maple bonbons as an after-dinner treat.

Bob and Irene would have explained the maple sugaring process and pointed out their maple grove — the trees that they tapped — as well as their sugar house, high on the hillside pasture above the farmhouse.

Bob Slater and his son, Alan, collecting sap from maple trees, the first step in making maple syrup, early 1940s. Courtesy of Robert Alan Slater.

Hopper’s choosing to make a painting of the sugar house — the only painting of a building among his South Royalton watercolors — surely reflected not only his aesthetic values but also his interest in the workings of Wagon Wheels farm. Hopper also painted a single monumental maple tree on the Slaters’ property, selecting an iconic image of Vermont that represented  a significant element of the Green Mountain economy, in Hopper’s time  as it does now.

I’ve tried to capture some of the flavor of the Hoppers’ stay in South Royalton in the central chapter of my book, “On the Slaters’ Farm.” That I know as much as I do of the Hoppers’ time there is thanks to Robert Alan Slater, who was seven years old when the artists first visited his parents’ farm. Edward and Jo knew the boy as Alan, but as an adult  he called himself Bob, like his father.

I located Bob and his wife, Thelma, when I first began the research for my book, and their help all along has been invaluable to me. Bob provided access to the materials he inherited from his parents, including letters from Jo to Irene, Jo’s watercolor of himself as a child, and Edward’s drawings of the farmhouse, which he made for labels on Irene’s maple products. During our many telephone conversations, Bob shared recollections that enriched my view of farm life in Vermont during the 1930s. His stories also enabled me to add a degree of warmth and humanity to my account of Edward Hopper’s time in Vermont.

It is thus with great regret that I report that Robert Alan Slater passed away on May 3, 2013, at age 82, in his home in California. I will be forever grateful for his friendship, for his gregarious nature and enthusiasm for my project, and for his generosity in sharing stories, family memorabilia, and the photographs that appear here, in my book, and in the exhibition at Middlebury.

I know that my gratitude is shared by many Vermonters, who tell me that they have found some of their own history in Bob Slater’s stories and images from Wagon Wheels Farm.  Thank you, Bob. We will remember you!

Robert Alan Slater (1930 – 2013). Left, about seven years old, ca. 1937. Right, in 2010, holding the watercolor portrait of himself that Jo Hopper painted in 1937.  Adjacent to her signature Jo wrote: “Alan Slater on his 7th birthday, and made to pose on his birthday!”

Edward Hopper in Vermont has surfaced in New York, and  I’m happy to report that my book is now providing escape reading for Manhattanites. Ideally, come June, these folks will make a real escape from New York—as did Edward and Jo Hopper—and head north to Vermont, where  Hopper’s Vermont drawings and watercolors will be on display at the Middlebury College Museum of Art. This will be the first return of these works to Vermont since Hopper made them, during various summers between 1927 and 1938.

Last Sunday, thanks to an invitation from Christie’s auction house in Rockefeller Center, I spoke to an appreciative audience of New Yorkers about my book and Hopper’s time in Vermont. Most of them were surprised—as are Vermonters—to hear this story and see my photos of the places that Hopper painted in the Green Mountains.  Actually, though, if affiliation were based on longevity of residence, many of Hopper’s Vermont watercolors would have to be considered New Yorkers.

At least seven of the Vermont watercolors have been in New York ever since Hopper unpacked them from the trunk of his car, returning to the city after summers in New England. These paintings were still in Hopper’s studio after Edward and Jo Hopper  died–in 1967 and ’68, respectively–and consequently they were part of the Josephine N. Hopper Bequest to the Whitney Museum of American Art.  They remain in the Whitney today, emerging from time to time to appear in the pages of the annual desk or wall calendars, but rarely (if ever) exhibited.  Happily, all of them will travel together from New York to Vermont this summer, joining their “siblings” for the Middlebury exhibit.

Another of the Vermont watercolors, Barn and Silo, Vermont, painted in 1927 during Hopper’s first trip to Vermont, also became a permanent resident of the Big Apple. It was purchased almost immediately after Hopper delivered it to the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries,  along with other watercolors from that summer’s trip, to Cape Elizabeth and Portland in Maine and the Bellows Falls area in Vermont. The buyer was Lesley G. Shaefer, a New York stockbroker who was on an art-buying spree during the economic boom that preceded the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Shaefer paid $300 for Barn and Silo; Rehn took a one-third commission, and Hopper received $200. [Compare this with the $1.7+ million price realized for Barn at Essex, a Hopper watercolor from 1929, auctioned at Christie's in November 2012!]

Barn and Silo, Vermont remained hidden away in Shaefer’s New York abode until 1973, when it was part of his widow’s unexpected bequest of antiques and fine art to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This Hopper watercolor has been on display only briefly at the Met and otherwise has been exhibited just once, in 1989 at the Musée Cantini in Marseille, France. Like White River at Sharon, which was in the recent Hopper exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris, Barn and Silo has traveled to France but it has never been shown in Vermont. This gap it its resume will be corrected in May, when it will return for the exhibit at Middlebury.

Oddly enough, the Metropolitan Museum published a poster of Barn and Silo, Vermont  in 1995, even though the painting was in storage at the time, unavailable for viewing by visitors to the museum. Years later, however, this poster served a fortuitous purpose for me: It was my initial tip-off to the connection between Edward Hopper and Vermont.  The Met’s Barn and Silo, Vermont, the poster reproduction, now hangs in a place of honor in our South Royalton home. Hopper’s Barn and Silo, Vermont, the original watercolor, will travel from New York to Middlebury in May, returning for the first time to its birthplace of more than 85 years ago.

I’ll write more about the back stories of Hopper’s Vermont paintings — the New Yorkers and the ones that reside in other places throughout the country — as we get closer to May and the opening of the Middlebury exhibit.  Stay tuned!

Hopper is BIG in New York! The super-sized image In Christie’s window, facing Rockefeller Plaza, is Hopper’s “October on Cape Cod,” sold in November 2012 for nearly $10 million. The original, an oil painting from 1946, is considerably more modest in size, at approximately 26 x 42 in.

Edward Hopper didn’t visit Vermont in the winter (he hated cold weather), so he never saw the White River cloaked in snow and ice. His seven watercolors of the river landscape in Royalton, Bethel, and Sharon display the colors of late summer — grasses and trees with the yellowish tones that are a harbinger of autumn, pale blue waters rippled by wind, and the deep indigo shadows that mold the hills in the late afternoon.

Hopper’s First Branch of the White River, painted in 1938 in South Royalton, is the most intensely colorful of his Vermont landscapes.  This watercolor, in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston, is the best-known of Hopper’s Vermont paintings. It was included in the 2007 – 2008 Edward Hopper exhibition — the most recent retrospective of Hopper’s works in the U.S. — which travelled from Boston to the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Art Institute of Chicago, so you may have seen it in one of those venues. First Branch is also the most-often  published of the Vermont works, and it’s on the cover of my book, Edward Hopper in Vermont.

We think Hopper missed something of Vermont’s beauty by not being here in the winter.  So last week, after a few days of frigid weather (-16 degrees F, one morning…yes, that’s a minus sign!) we decided to take a ride up Route 110 to take a look at the First Branch of the White River as Hopper never saw it. Here are the results — and just click on the photos to see them full-size.

Hopper sat on the hillside near the Slaters’ farmhouse to paint the First Branch. In 1938 the area was still in pasture, but now it’s densely overgrown, making it impossible to exactly re-create Hopper’s perspective. But in winter, with the leaves off the trees, you can just see the curve in the river from a spot on Ducker Road that’s close to the place where Hopper propped his stool and easel. As you move down the road a bit, toward Route 110, the bridge becomes visible, crossing the First Branch near the site of an old mill.

There’s no place to stop along Route 110 for a view of the First Branch, so we drove down to the bridge so I could shoot photos of the frozen river on the far side of the bend. Hopper was facing south, roughly, and I faced north, looking back toward the hillside where Hopper sat. The tall pines may be the same ones that are in Hopper’s painting, as these trees live to a ripe old age. The slabs of concrete in the river are probably from the foundation of the bridge that was there in Hopper’s time, remains of the landscape of 75 years ago. Within the river there’s a whole new landscape, albeit a temporary one, a microcosmic universe formed by the ice.

While the sun was shining, we drove back up Ducker Road to take a look at the Slaters’ farm property in the snow.  I photographed an old sugar maple, one that may have been there before the land was subdivided and the new owner built this house.  Were it not for the structures,”Bob Slater’s Hill,” as Hopper called it, would be visible in the background, as it is in Hopper’s picture, Sugar Maple, from 1938.

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There was still enough daylight to catch one more of Hopper’s views of the White River looking white, so we drove southeast on Route 14 to the place shown in White River at Sharon.  I’d noted in a previous post about the French connection (“Hopper’s White River: The View from Paris”) that this spot is a swimming hole in the summer –  but no bathers were in sight on this January day!  The rock formations are now snow covered, but if you click on the image and look closely, you can see the match with Hopper’s watercolor — and there’s even a dead tree in the center of the outcrop.

This painting, by the way, is still in Paris. The Edward Hopper exhibition at the Grand Palais was so successful that it was extended for an additional week, then stayed open round-the-clock to accommodate the anticipated 40,000 last-minute visitors! The exhibition closed on February 3, so in a few days this picture of the White River will be crated up and on its way back to its home in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.

It’s wonderfully cold and snowy in Vermont, weather that gives me hope that winter hasn’t entirely disappeared from our planet. I thought that this would be a good time to replace my header photo — the one of a stack of books outside on a balmy autumn day — with a more seasonal shot, showing the book situated cozily indoors.

Vermont is beautiful in the snow, but Edward Hopper didn’t like cold weather, and so we have no Hopper watercolors of the White River looking truly white.  For those kinds of pictures we have to look  to Aldro Hibbard and Willard Metcalf, who painted en plein air even in frigid weather and left us some gorgeous winter scenes, some of them in Vermont, with rivers and brooks streaming through islands of ice.

Edward and Josephine Hopper spent their winters in New York City’s Greenwich Village, at 3 Washington Square North. Their residence, a walk-up on the top floor, comprised living quarters and two studios, Edward’s in the front and Jo’s in the rear of the building. They lived there from the time of their marriage, in 1924, until they died, Edward in 1967 and Jo less than a year later.

Presumably the Hoppers kept reasonably warm, with both a fireplace and a cast-iron pot belly stove, made by the W. M. Crane Company, but they had to bring coal up from the basement, either using the dumbwaiter or walking up four flights–a climb of 74 steps.

The building was and is owned by New York University, and although the space has been used for offices for many years, some of the accoutrements of the Hoppers’ home are still there  — the coal-burning stove (sans stovepipe), Edward’s etching press and easel, and a few pieces of furniture. A  few years ago I signed up for a group tour of 3 Washington Square, with fellow alums from Columbia University, and I took these pictures then. Note that the place looks pretty much the same as it did in 1947, when Bernice Abbott took the famous photo that’s now hanging over the fireplace. Even at his most successful, Hopper remained frugal, and his and Jo’s homes were sparsely furnished, in keeping with their rather Spartan lifestyle.
The Hoppers also had a cookstove, a York range with burners and an oven, but it’s hard to imagine preparing meals in the tiny “kitchen.” It’s a stretch to even use the term for this cramped space, divided by the narrow hallway that runs through the center of the apartment, with the stove on one side and a small sink and half-sized Frigidaire on the other.  No wonder Jo hated to cook!  I suspect that the  “Do not touch” signs placed by NYU would have met with her enthusiastic approval.
Mike and I — no Spartans we! — have a Vermont Castings stove that we use for atmosphere and extra warmth on really chilly nights.  It runs on propane and is certainly easier to operate and probably a lot more efficient than the Hopper’s cast-iron coal stove. But it nevertheless reminds me of him, and so I thought it would be another good setting for a photo of the book.  Since Edward Hopper is here in Vermont this winter, figuratively speaking, the least I can do is to keep him warm.

Today, while taking a walk on the road that runs up the hill from our house, we found evidence in an abandoned shed that some of our long-ago neighbors had something in common with Hopper, at least in the stove department.

I guess this is just yet another take on “Finding Edward Hopper in Vermont.”

And a postscript:
While you’re keeping warm on these cold winter evenings, I can recommend a great book to read while you’re curled up by the fire:  Edward Hopper in Vermont.

One of Edward Hopper’s Vermont watercolors, White River at Sharon (1937), is now on view in Paris, in the major Hopper retrospective exhibition at the Grand Palais. It’s on loan from the Smithsonian American Art Museum until the end of January 2013, when it will return to its home in Washington, D.C.
Edward Hopper, White River at Sharon, 1937, watercolor and pencil on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation.

I’ve been wondering what the French think of this small painting–whether this modest watercolor and others of its ilk attract any attention among the scores of major Hopper works on display, including the iconic Nighthawks (1942) and Gas (1940).  So I did a search to see if the Vermont watercolor received any notice in reviews of the Grand Palais show. Not surprisingly, I found no mention of it by critics or curators, but Googling nevertheless revealed that White River at Sharon is not a total stranger to the French.  In 1995, a portion of this painting was used as the cover image for the French edition of Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America (La pêche à la truite en Amérique). Thus this Vermont watercolor may actually have had more popular exposure in France than in America!
I found this unexpected piece of Hopperabilia on a blog called “A propos de livres…“  The blogger writes that even before seeing the Grand Palais exhibition he was familiar with many of the paintings without knowing the name of the artist.  He then presents the covers of some 50 books–French editions, all–that carry images of Hopper paintings. This is an amazing compilation, and I wonder if anyone has done this for American book covers. New research project, anyone?

By the way, Richard Brautigan’s novella, originally published in 1961 and a classic from the hippie era, has nothing to do with Vermont.  But you can indeed fish for trout in the White River.

On another blog from Paris, Colleen wrote about seeing the exhibition and her impressions of “Hopper and the Continuation of the Impressionist Influence.” I wrote and asked if she’d seen White River at Sharon, and if she had any comments about this Vermont painting from the perspective of Paris. Today I had a wonderful reply from her.  She returned to the exhibit specifically to see the painting, examined it closely, and asked other visitors for their comments, which she then reported to me in vivid detail.  This is almost as good as being at the Grand Palais myself (perhaps better, since I don’t speak French and Colleen relayed the comments in English!).  Our exhange of comments is below, and you can read her original commentary on “Colleen’s Paris Blog.”  As a rejoinder perhaps I’ll ask some Vermonters to comment on Hopper’s paintings of the Seine.

From Colleen’s Paris Blog:

Bonnie Tocher Clause wrote:

I see that my recently published book, “Edward Hopper in Vermont,” is listed at the end of your blog; great! It includes reproductions of Hopper’s Vermont watercolors, and one of them, “White River at Sharon,” is in the Paris exhibit. Did you notice it? I’m curious to hear comments about it from the Parisian point of view.

Colleen wrote:
Dear Ms. Clause, Standing close, far away, to the side, the watercolor, “White River at Sharon” attracts little attention. The attention is general in nature. The works in the room “Watercolors 1926-1937″ related to the audio guide and the wall explanation attract the visitors. Whispering, it is difficult to hear what visitors say about “White River…” so finally I ask.

Two French guys probably in their late 20s stand and look at the painting. They stand a while. I tell them about Jo’s notes (wife of Hopper) of a railroad track. Until reading that passage in your book online (Google books), I had seen nothing of interest in the work, only the nature.

Once I posed questions to the gentlemen, a group formed and listened as we conversed. The guard approached us, telling me that pointing at the paintings is not permitted. Perhaps she was afraid I would slip and put my finger on the art.

Once the line of the track is pointed out, they see the embankment. It now stands out among the nature. Otherwise, the watercolor held no particular interest for the visitors.

I leave and then return to the room as a fresh crowd enters.

A mother and daughter stand in front pointing to the upper right corner.

Questioning them, they notice the previously unnoticeable brown line. They have no idea of its meaning; however, they speculate.

The daughter presents the idea that Hopper paints stable, unmoving objects in all his other works. This painting is unusual for the movement of the trees, the clouds, the water lapping up against the rocks. The mother is interested and curious about the composition of the tree on the rock: leaves and green on one side, dead branches on the other.

The daughter is in preparatory studies for literature at university. They are looking for the literary in the paintings. In that frame of thinking, I suggest that perhaps the dead side of the tree points toward the railroad track and represents a road to nowhere; a road of inactivity, which leads to death.

I hope this is what you had in mind as to commentary on “White River at Sharon”. Colleen

No, this is not the title of a new song by the Muppets. Rather, it’s a short story about coming across an odd and unexpected reference to the Aloha Spirit while doing the research for Edward Hopper in Vermont—a connection that’s aside from my having lived for many years in Hawai’i. Bear with me while I establish the links.

A couple of weeks ago I read a wonderful article in the New York Times travel section about the visit that Georgia O’Keeffe made to Hawai’i in 1939.  Of course I was immediately struck by the parallels with Edward Hopper’s visits to Vermont during the same time period. Both of these stories involve New York artists’ anomalous sojourns in beautiful, rural places, far off the beaten track. O’Keeffe stayed in Hana, a plantation town on the outer island of Maui, and Hopper boarded on a farm in central Vermont, where cows outnumbered people. In both cases, the result was a small number of distinctive works that could not have been painted elsewhere, the flamboyant O’Keeffe’s dramatic and brilliantly colored oils of I’ao Falls and tropical vegetation, and the quiet Hopper’s watercolor scenes of the White River, a more peaceful and subtle landscape. The eye witness to each of these stories was a child, both now elderly but still with us to tell the tale. In Hawai’i, Patricia Jennings, the 12-year-old daughter of the plantation owner, served as a guide for O’Keeffe, and in Vermont, 7-year-old Alan Slater, son of the owners of Wagon Wheels Farm, joined the cows in watching Hopper paint the First Branch of the White River.  Jennings has a photo of Georgia that she snapped in 1939. Slater owns a watercolor portrait of himself, painted by Jo Hopper in 1937.

The Georgia O’Keeffe story got me thinking about Hawai’i, and since I’m sitting in Vermont, it was a natural segue to thoughts of the Aloha Foundation and its camps—Aloha Hive, Lanakila, and Ohana—which are not on the beaches of Maui, O’ahu, or Kaua’i, but on the Vermont shores of Lakes Fairlee and Morey, just about 30 miles north of South Royalton. Unlikely as it may seem, these camps reflect a very real historical connection between New England and “the Sandwich Islands,” in this case, between Vermont and Hawai’i.  The Aloha camps were founded over 100 years ago by Edward Gulick and Harriet Farnsworth Gulick, who were the descendants of missionary families who had emigrated from New England to Asia and the Pacific in the early 19th century.  The Gulicks grew up in Hawai’i, most likely attended the missonary-founded Punahou School, and then reversed their ancestors’ itinerary, crossing the ocean to the U.S. Mainland and returning to New England.  In 1905 “Mother” and “Father” Gulick opened their first camp for girls, named Aloha in loving remembrance of Hawai’i, and based on the ideals of ethical service and community responsibility. Aloha was followed by Aloha Hive, for younger girls, and Lanakila, for boys. The Aloha camps have subsequently hosted multiple generations of loyal campers and continue to be vibrantly active to this day.

And now we get to the Hopper connection.  In the summer of 1920, four years before her marriage to Edward Hopper, Josephine Nivison worked as an arts and crafts counselor at the Aloha Hive camp. Jo was an accomplished artist—having studied painting with the famous Robert Henri—but an impoverished one. To earn a living she taught in the public schools of New York City. As a teacher, she may have been recruited by the Aloha Camps, or she may have answered an ad in the New York Times, offering “A Summer Opportunity” with “good salary” in an appealing and beautiful location, a respite from the heat and crowds of the city.  In any event, in 1920 Jo traveled by train to Ely, Vermont, and spent two months at Aloha Hive. Returning to New York after this stint in the country, she wrote that the problems of city life seemed remote and unreal.
I found no other mention of Aloha Hive in Jo’s letters in the Whitney Museum archives. But Josephine Nivison’s 1920 registration card, identifying her simply as a “craft councillor,” remains in the files at the Aloha Foundation in Fairlee, and I visited their archives to look for any traces of Jo’s summer in Vermont. In a box of assorted memorabilia I found a panoramic photo of all the Aloha Hivers from 1920, campers seated in the front row, counselors lined up in the back—and there was Jo, unmistakable for her curly hair and diminutive stature, dressed in the camp uniform of middy blouse and tie. Truth be told, her brow is furrowed, and she does not appear to have been infused with the esprit de camp—the Aloha spirit, in this case. Perhaps she was ill, as she had been when she left a difficult teaching job in New York City. Nevertheless, the Aloha Hive landscape must have made a positive impression on Jo, for seven years later she encouraged Edward Hopper to drive across the Connecticut River into Vermont, in search of places to paint.  Perhaps she did indeed absorb the Aloha spirit–Vermont version–and the idyllic directive to the Aloha Hive campers in this paradise on the shores of Lake Fairlee:
“Get the rest and inspiration of this lovely spot. . . . Store up happy memories . . . and an  intimacy with the many beautiful places about Aloha. Shut your eyes and see if you can carry away with you for long years to come the picture you see from your tent, the wooded hills, the rippling lake, and the gray distant mountains.” (From a brochure cited by  Katherine S. Christie, “History of the Aloha Foundation,” 2003.)

Writing this makes me think once again how much Vermont reminds me of Hawai’i, something that seems odd only to those who haven’t experienced both places.  But that’s the subject of another story.

Lake Fairlee, Vermont, site of the Aloha Foundation camps. Photo: Bonnie Clause, 2010.

On Thusday, November 29, I’ll be talking about Edward Hopper at First Light Studios in  Randolph, thanks to the kind invitation of Bob and Kathy Eddy. This beautifully renovated space is where the Eddys engage in their own creative pursuits–Kathy, composing music, and Bob, painting and photography. And their excitement in learning about Edward Hopper’s Vermont works is surpassed only by my own!

It’s Bob who took the terrific photos for his book review–”Edward Hopper’s Vermont was the White River Valley”–in last week’s Randolph Herald (and yes, he’s an excellent writer as well).  I’m hoping that on November 29 he’ll add his commentary on Hopper to mine. As an artist and photographer, Bob has much to say about how Hopper translated landscape into paint and paper. It was fascinating to hear his “take” on this when he toured Hopper’s sites with Mike and me a couple of weeks ago.

Come join the discussion, at 7:00 p.m. on November 29, at 34A Pleasant Street in Randolph.

Mike and me at the site where Hopper painted Rain on River (bottom plate) in 1938.
Photo by Bob Eddy for the Randolph Herald.

This week and next I’m talking about Edward Hopper in Vermont in two locations, moving closer each time to the places Hopper painted in 1937 and ’38.

On Saturday, November 10th, at 2:00 p.m., I’ll be at the Norman Williams Public Library, on The Green in Woodstock, Vermont. Edward Hopper might have chosen this beautiful, classic New England town as a place to stay and paint, as other artists in this time period certainly did.  But in 1937 Hopper avoided any place that came close to being an artists’ colony.  Instead, he settled in about 20 miles farther to the north, in the lovely, more rural town of South Royalton.

On Thursday, November 15th, at 5:30 p.m., I’ll be there–in downtown SoRo, at the Vermont Law School’s Barrister’s Bookshop on Chelsea Street.This is just a mile south of the location of the Slaters’ farm, Wagon Wheels, where Edward and Jo Hopper boarded in the summers of 1937 and ’38.

EDWARD HOPPER SLEPT HERE!

The Slaters’ farmhouse is still there, on Rte 110 just past Ducker Road. Hopper painted First Branch of the White River, the watercolor on the cover of my book, from the perspective of the  steep hillside next to the farmhouse. Later, asked about the circumstances of making the painting, Hopper wrote that “aside from…the curiosity of the cows, the occasion was not momentous.”

The farmhouse was long ago converted to apartments, which now are usually occupied by VLS students. Perhaps the book will inspire them to make a plaque: “Edward Hopper Slept Here.” The occasion may not have been momentous, but it is nevertheless notable that one of America’s most famous and beloved artists found our corner of Vermont to be a beautiful, peaceful place to linger for a while–and to paint.

Thanks to Shiretown Books for co-sponsoring the Woodstock talk, and to the Royalton Historical Society and the White River Partnership for co-sponsoring the SoRo talk.

Last night I gave my first “book talk” ever (this is, after all, my first book), for Phoenix Books in Burlington, Vermont, with Mike there as wingman and PowerPoint point person. We had a great time, and the audience seemed to enjoy the evening as well. They were wonderfully attentive, laughed at my quips—and many of them bought copies of Edward Hopper in Vermont.  I even got to sit on the author’s side of the table (on the other side was a line of people, all holding books…be still my heart!), signing copies and chatting with my “fans.” One person took a photo of me signing a book for her daughter, who loves Hopper and used to live in South Royalton. Some of my Facebook and LinkedIn contacts came up and introduced themselves, virtual friends now become real. Pinch me, please!  Is all of this really happening?

Yes, it is indeed, and another piece of good news is that this was more than a one-night stand for books in Burlington. The owners and staff of Phoenix Books have created a warm and welcoming oasis for authors and readers in the heart of the city.  The store is attractive, spacious, and well-stocked. The staff are friendly and savvy, and they seem to genuinely like books and the people who buy them.  And the store stays open until 10 p.m. on weekends!

When I first visited Phoenix Books a few weeks ago I was reminded of Borders in its heyday. In the mid-1990s, when Borders opened a three-story bookstore on Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, I practically lived there.  John Ciardi was still alive and talking about words and poetry on NPR’s Morning Edition; if he read something I liked, I could pop into Borders on the way to work and buy a volume of poems to read on the bus.  Browsing in Phoenix brought back the pleasure of simply being among Real Books—physically surrounded by them, not just scrolling through lists of titles—something I’d eschewed while being immersed in writing one of my own, lured by the time-saving convenience of shopping online while still in my pajamas.

I bought two books at Phoenix that day, one that I’d been wanting to read and another that simply caught my eye as I took a leisurely walk among the shelves—a luscious read that I never would have found other than serendipitously, in a Real Live Bookstore.  At home, taking my purchases out of their sack, I re-discovered that irreplaceable, indescribable New Book Smell.  It whets my appetite to read, read, read.  And I think it disappears, somehow, from books stored in the warehouses of Amazon.com, traveling to us in the trucks of USPS, UPS, or FedEx.

Hence my Ode to Real Live Bookstores everywhere.  Interestingly, while thinking about writing this paean, I found the Borders employees’ “Ode to a bookstore death” posted online in September. It’s an angry, disillustioned rant about customers, a sad testament to what Borders had become. What a happy contrast to see stores like Phoenix celebrating what bookstores are really ‘sposed to be about: Real Books, made of paper and cloth, and the people who read them.