December 9, 2019
‘DOOR KNOB TO HISTORY’/photograph/gunther
By Arthur H. Gunther III
(also on Facebook)
Edward Hopper, the famous American realist painter, could not have reached this marbled 1858 door knob in his childhood bedroom until a few years after his 1882 Nyack, N.Y., birth, but once he began turning it, the door opened to a lifetime of painting and images that endure, that captivate, that draw you into stories the viewer must write.
Yet, turning that door knob was not always easy. It was decades before the gifted artist connected with his audience, and even after that there were periods of frustration, perhaps doubt and all that comes with it.
Edward Hopper probably touched this door knob for the last time just after his sister Marion’s 1965 passing and as he approached his own death in 1967 at age 82.
Fittingly, there is now a bit of white wall paint on the bedroom knob, not from his era but there nonetheless.
The writer is a retired newspaperman. ahgunther@yahoo.com