Second Story Sunlight

Second Story Sunlight is a 1960 painting by the American artist Edward Hopper. It depicts two women of different ages on the second-story balcony of a white house. The older woman reads a newspaper while the younger woman sits on the railing.

Edward Hopper is widely acknowledged as the most important realist painter of twentieth-century America. Hopper derived his subject matter from two primary sources: one, the common features of American life (gas stations, motels, restaurants, theatres, railroads, and street scenes) and its inhabitants; and two, seascapes and rural landscapes.   No one captured the isolation of the individual within the modern city like Edward Hopper. His imagery of figures within urban settings go well beyond their role as modern cityscapes, exposing the underbelly of the human experience. His work demonstrates that realism is not merely a literal or photographic copying of what we see, but an interpretive rendering.