Edward Hopper | Chop Suey, 1929

"Chop Suey" is the most iconic Edward Hopper (1882-1967) painting.

The 1929 masterpiece became the most expensive work of pre-war American art when it sold for $91,875,000 (including buyer’s premium) on 13 November 2018 as part of An American Place: The Barney A. Ebsworth Collection.

In his early years Hopper studied painting at the New York School of Art under Robert Henri, the leader of the Ashcan School, which emphasised a gritty realism.

Although his style would transform over time, Hopper never abandoned Henri’s central teaching: to paint the city and street life he knew best.

While some of his contemporaries focused on the flamboyant flapper set, Hopper trained his eye on the quieter, quotidian dramas unfolding in unpretentious places such as Chinese restaurants, automats and diners.

Derived from the Cantonese phrase tsap sui, meaning ‘odds and ends’, chop suey restaurants had by the mid-1920s evolved into popular luncheonettes where the new working class could grab a bite to eat.

Hopper’s oil paintings were often a result of a combination of his past experiences, and it is thought that Chop Suey was partially inspired by two restaurants the artist visited in the 1920s.

The Far East Tea Garden, located at 8 Columbus Circle on New York City’s Upper West Side, was a second-floor spot that Hopper and his wife Josephine frequented in the early years of their marriage.

The Empire Chop Suey in Portland, Maine, where the Hoppers spent the summer of 1927, boasted a similarly striking sign - 24ft high and weighing 600 pounds - to the one that features so prominently in the painting.

Neither establishment still exists.

In Chop Suey, two women sit at a table, with another couple partially visible in the background.

The bright white tables are conspicuously empty, with only the Asian teapot on the near table suggesting any Chinese influence.

Art historian Judith A. Barter has explained that this is characteristic of Hopper’s style:

- "There is never anything to eat on Hopper’s tables.

Famously uninterested in food, Hopper and his wife often made dinner from canned ingredients.

What he found important were the spaces where eating and drinking took place".

Hopper’s restaurant paintings reflect the shifting role and view of American women in the late 1920s.

Chop suey joints were spaces where the new female workforce was welcome - indeed, the woman facing the viewer is the painting’s focal point.

But rather than basking in the light streaming in from the restaurant window, she appears pensive, avoiding eye contact with either the viewer or her companion.

Posed for by Josephine Hopper - as were all three female figures in the scene - she seems removed from the woman sitting just across from her.

This sense of distance is heightened by Hopper’s practice of using light almost as a theatre spotlight, contributing an unsettling sense of solitude. | Source: © Christie's