Edward Hopper's ledger books, part of the New York Whitney Museum's large Hopper holdings, provide the unique opportunity to peer into the creative process of one of the most private and taciturn artists of the modern era. Together with his wife, Hopper recorded paintings made and paintings sold, invoices made and payments received, materials used and subjects considered. What the skethches and notations convey, however, is not the day-today working process of just any painter, but of an artist whose subject engaged the very notion of the quotidian in a manner unrivalled to the present day. And they shed a new light on the Whitney Museum's special and privileged relationship with the artist. Juxtaposing selected original ledger pages with full-color reproductions of the respective paintings, this volume documents the making-of and subsequent fate of Edward Hopper's most revered works.
