Image Courtesy of Art Institute of Chicago

In desperate need of a topic for her thesis as an art history graduate student, Elizabeth Thompson Colleary visited an Ed Hopper exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. While there, she came across a piece that surprised her. Hopper, who's known for his peaceful lighthouses and lonely people in diners, painted a "bizarre" and "garish" stripper walking across a stage, a painting titled "Girlie Show." Colleary began research that would ultimately become her life's work.

It began with finding out that the model of the "Girlie Show" was Josephine Nivison Hopper. An American painter and Ed's wife of 17 years. The first natural question posed by Colleary was, "Who paints their wife like that?" and the second question was, "Who is Josephine?" Colleary quickly found that beyond being his wife and muse, Jo was a painter herself. As she uncovered more details of her life, Colleary's fascination for this woman grew exponentially, and so began the journey to rediscover the forgotten and overshadowed legacy of Josephine Nivison Hopper, an artist in her own right.

If someone were to ask Colleary if she loves Hopper's work, her answer would be no. Her interest in the Hoppers stemmed from need, "The short answer is, I had to do the paper. I would lose my fellowship if I didn't get an A. I wouldn't get an A if I didn't write a paper. So, I decided to do Hopper. But I wasn't drawn to him because I liked his art. I liked the question his work posed."

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Colleary's research began with a grant from The Whitney to work on the Hopper archives. These were papers donated by Jo when she passed, along with 3,500 works of art, 500 of which were painted by Josephine herself. These papers were not yet cataloged; they simply waited in storage for years. Colleary eventually landed a position as a Hopper Research Associate and spent almost seven years processing these papers. The Hoppers owned these letters and documents, and Colleary was allowed to read them all. During these seven years, Colleary corresponded with a family friend of the Hoppers, Reverend Sanborn, who took care of them in their old age. Upon visiting his home, Colleary noticed "this beautiful watercolor… and [Colleary] said, 'I know every single one of Edward Hopper's watercolors. I've never seen that.' The reverend responded, 'That's not by Edward, that's by Jo'. And I said, 'How can that be by Jo? I've been trying to find her work for years.' And he literally said, 'I have it in the basement." 

Image courtesy of Whitney Museum of American Art

Colleary was the first researcher or art historian to have laid eyes on all of the works waiting in Reverend Sanborn’s basement. This was where Colleary found Jo’s art, her exhibition reviews, all of her writing, all of her letters (discovering a secret Nicaraguan boyfriend she shared with Edna St. Vincent Millay), and her journals. Through this, Colleary found a story that had not been told; the story of Jo Nivison Hopper. Understanding the value of Jo’s art and legacy, Colleary began reconstructing this story. 

In the 1910s and 20s, Ed Hopper lived with his parents in Nyack, New York, traveling into the city to take an art class. He worked as a magazine commercial illustrator but wasn’t selling his art. As a deeply introverted person, he had few friends he saw infrequently. At the same time, Jo lived with a friend in Greenwich Village and exhibited her work in major modernist exhibitions. She was very highly regarded as an artist and art critic. Jo’s position in the art world at the time was extraordinary. “She made a living as a female artist in New York City in 1910. That was unheard of.” Jo’s career as an artist was on an upward projection. Her potential for mainstream success was evident in all of her exhibits. Yet today, she is known almost entirely as Ed Hopper’s wife. And Colleary wondered why.

After Jo and Ed began dating in 1923, Jo was invited to a prestigious exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. Jo had room for ten of her paintings in the exhibit, and she chose to give five of them to Ed. The Brooklyn Museum purchased his watercolors for $100 that day. From there on out, his career skyrocketed, and Ed went from being unable to sell a painting for ten years to selling out watercolor exhibitions entirely because of Jo.

Image courtesy of Hopper’s America

Ed is known for painting the solitude of American life. He’s known for his wide open fields and seemingly empty houses. He’s known for paintings of lonely or tense people. He’s known for his impression as a solitary man. But Colleary discovered, through Reverend Sanborn’s basement, a dozen watercolors painted by Jo that were identical to Ed’s, “[Reverend Sanborn]’s showing them to me, and I’m like, this looks familiar. This is the Gloucester station. This looks familiar. This is the Portuguese church in Gloucester.” And then it became clear that they painted next to each other.” 

This discovery upended both Jo’s and Ed’s legacies as artists. Ed was no longer the solitary man who painted America once we discovered that his wife was by his side through it all. Jo was no longer the woman behind the man and an occasional painter. Still, when the Whitney Museum received Jo’s donation of her and Ed’s paintings, her work was “just put in cartons. His work was cataloged. It was labeled, it was identified, it was given accession numbers, it was exhibited, it was published. Hers was just in cartons.” 

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As I interviewed Colleary, I wondered, “Why do you think Jo gave up her career to support Ed?” Colleary explained that despite her success as a female artist at the time, Jo was still a woman living in a man’s world. She knew that no matter how great her art or her potential for success, a male artist would get more exhibits, better pay, and a wider audience. And Jo and Ed needed an income. So Jo poured time and effort into shaping Ed to become the artist he is known as today; an effort that could have been put into her own career was transferred to that of Ed because it was necessary for them at the time. But it is no longer 1924. It is a century later, and we have the time and the space to view Jo as more than just the woman behind the man; more than just a Hopper. We can reconstruct her legacy and finally appreciate Josephine Nivison Hopper as an artist in her own right.