October on Cape Cod

Edward Hopper spent his summers in Truro on Cape Cod, and this 1946 painting holds onto the quiet feeling he loved about the place. A plain white house with green shutters sits next to a small weathered shed, both hemmed in by dry golden grass and a heavy line of dark trees stretching across the background. The light has that soft, slightly sad quality of a fall afternoon, when the busy summer season has drained away. No people appear anywhere in the scene, only the two buildings resting alone in the open land, a choice Hopper made over and over in his work.

Stillness is what marks this as unmistakably his. He had a knack for taking ordinary scenes and giving them a lonely, almost secretive mood, so you find yourself wondering whether anyone lives in that house at all. The plain homes and empty fields of the Cape, where he stayed with his wife Jo, gave him no shortage of subjects to paint. This is not among his best-known pictures, but it carries the same honest eye for everyday American places that made him one of the country's most cherished realist painters.