Edward Hopper's House by the Railroad: From Painting to Poem

Visit the National Gallery of Art website for a short biography of Edward Hopper. Then read about House by the Railroad (1925) in the two-page chapter on Hopper in the Picturing America Teachers Resource Book. The chapter provides instructions on how to look at the painting and what kinds of questions to ask of it, which will be invaluable to Activity 1.

The Picturing America Teachers Resource Book can provide you with comparative material on other artworks. You might consider Hopper's realism in tandem with Winslow Homer's The Veteran in a New Field (1865) and Thomas Eakins' John Biglin in a Single Scull (1873). Following leads from the Teachers Resource Book's index, you might also want to look at Walker Evan's photograph of Brooklyn Bridge (1929) and Joseph Stella's painting Brooklyn Bridge (c. 1919-1920), as well as Charles Sheeler's American Landscape (1930) for other depictions of industrialization in America. Sheeler's painting, like Hopper's, looks at the railroad's place in the landscape. The nature and evolution of the American landscape provide the subjects for many of the works on this site, including Albert Bierstadt's dramatic and magnificent image of the frontier in Looking Down from Yosemite Valley, California (1865); Thomas Cole's View from Mount Holyoke, North Hampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow (1836), which looks at the landscape as settlement was altering the wilderness. Romare Beardon's The Dove (1964) and Richard Diebenkorn's Cityscape 1 (1963) pursue the notion of cityscape as landscape.

For some information about the beginning of the industrial revolution in the United States, see the EDSITEment lesson plans "Was There an Industrial Revolution? Americans at Work Before the Civil War" and "Was There an Industrial Revolution? New Workplace, New Technology, New Consumers." A look at the impact of industrialism at the turn of the century can be found in the EDSITEment lesson "Carl Sandburg's 'Chicago': Bringing a Great City Alive." For background on some of the effects of the transcontinental railroad, look at "I Hear the Locomotives: The Impact of the Transcontinental Railroad."

Edward Hirsch is a contemporary poet who writes in a range of genres and addresses many themes, making him difficult to classify; he has published free verse and formal odes; and his primary preoccupations include emotional life, history, and politics, and most recently, the "divine." His second collection of poems, Wild Gratitude, in which "Edward Hopper's House by the Railroad (1925)" appeared, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for 1986. (The poem, published earlier in Poetry Magazine [Volume 140, July 1982], also appears in The Poetry of Solitude: A Tribute to Edward Hopper, an anthology collected and introduced by Gail Levin [New York: Universe Publishing, 1995].) Biographical and bibliographical information on Edward Hirsch, as well as samples of his prose and poetry and a recording of him reciting his poem "Cotton Candy," is available on the EDSITEment-reviewed Academy of American Poets website. More information and more links to Hirsch's work can also be found at the EDSITEment-reviewed Poetry Foundation website.

EDSITEment's Literary Glossary can provide help with basic poetic terms and devices. Also see Edward Hirsch's brief essay "How to Read a Poem" at the Academy of American Poets site.

• Review the lesson plan and the websites used throughout. Locate and bookmark suggested materials and websites. Download and print out documents you will use and duplicate copies as necessary for student viewing.

Activity 1. Feel

Before students read anything about Hopper's painting, ask them simply to look at it for a few minutes and then to describe how the painting makes them feel. To flesh out their responses, let them use Worksheet 1—where they can list pertinent words that come to mind as they examine the painting, describe their emotional responses to the painting, and register their associations (e.g. memories evoked, other paintings, art, literature, or music brought to mind, etc.). Use the Worksheet as the basis for discussion.

Activity 2. Look

Begin a thorough description of the painting with students by using Worksheet 2 to note all they see. Try to keep them focused on the visual evidence, to see the subtlest of physical details. As the worksheet suggests, you can stimulate discussion by asking:

• What objects are depicted in the painting (i.e., the train tracks, windows)?
• How many rooms do you think are in this house?
• Which objects are man-made? What natural landscape forms are depicted?
• Point out areas of light and dark. Where are the lightest lights? Where are the darkest darks?
• Where is the sun?
• What kind of shapes do you see? What kind of shape predominates?
• What colors are used in the painting? What color predominates? Where is the brightest color?
• What kinds of lines are used in the painting? What kind of line predominates? Where do lines create stillness or movement?
• Point out areas of pattern or repetition in the painting. What kind of rhythms do the patterns or repetitions create?
• List the different kinds of contrast (light/shade, lines, shapes, etc.)
• Describe the space. How deep is it? Is it crowded? Open? Where?

For every observation they have made above, ask "why?" or "with what consequence or result?" Explore the effects of the details to which their descriptions point.

Activity 3. Think

For this activity ask students to consider questions such as those in the "Describe and Analyze" section of the Teaching Activities in the Picturing America Teachers Resource Book chapter on Edward Hopper's House by the Railroad.

• What kind of people do you think originally lived in this house?
• In an era before air conditioning houses were kept cool in different ways: shade trees, large windows for cross-ventilation, shades that could be pulled down to block the heat of the sun, roofed porches. What kinds of sounds might the original inhabitants have heard? What kind of sounds might you hear there now?
• What time of day is it? What visual evidence suggests this? What temperature is it? What visual evidence suggests this? Why might the artist chose this time and this kind of day?
• Where are the darkest shadows on the house? Ask what these dark shadows suggest about the house? Is it welcoming?
• Ask students to talk about the mood of this painting. Ask them to explain why it evokes this mood. (Students should point to specific evidence from the painting.)

Activity 4. Write

Now invite students to write a poem about the painting. In the spirit of true creativity, you may not want to offer more guidance than that.

Activity 5. Read

Next, read Hirsch's "Edward Hopper and the House by the Railroad (1925)." Using Worksheet 3, asks students to make a list of all the subjects they can discern in Hirsch's poem. Once you have given them some time to do so (singly or in pairs), let them share their lists with the class, creating a master list on the board. Presumably a few students will offer some implicit subjects to include with the more evident explicit subjects, but if not, you can coax them there by drawing their attention to some of the more abstract diction: "strange," "ashamed," "relentless" or "horrible," for example, and then phrasing that list as nouns: "shame" and "horror," for example.

Also with the aid of Worksheet 3, ask students to choose a few of the subjects they think either especially important or most evocative of the subjects in Hopper's painting. Then ask them to use the second column of this part of the worksheet to note words or images from the poem that are relevant to those subjects.

Activity 6. Compare

Using Worksheet 4, ask students to note similarities and differences in Hirsch's and their own responses to the painting. Let them compare mood and tone and provide examples from both poems. They should also write a list of subjects, both implicit and explicit, in both poems, and write a list of images that stand out for them. Once they have done these worksheets, discuss their content; addressing the strengths and weaknesses of Hirsch's and their own imagery might be especially productive.

Activity 7. Look some more

Return to Hopper's painting. This would be a good time to turn to the "Interpret" section of the Teaching Activities in the Picturing America Teachers Resource Book chapter on Edward Hopper's House by the Railroad. You can use the questions there as a departure for discussion:

• Ask students to imagine how this scene would change if a train went by on this track.
• Ask students what they think was built first, the house or the railroad track. Ask them to explain why they think this.
• Have students think of a building in their community that seems old, outdated, and ugly, but not so old that it is a treasured antique. Explain that this is how Hopper probably felt about this house. Its Victorian architecture was dated and out of style in 1925, but today that style has regained some of its popularity.
• Point out visual examples of how this painting conveys a sense of loneliness. Why might many people come near this house each day? What might they think about the house and its inhabitants? Will they probably ever meet the people who live in this house? Why or why not?
• To prepare students to write, discuss both Hopper's painting and Hirsch's poem as commentaries on America in terms of encroaching industrialism, the impact of the railroad, and the changing landscape. Be sure to clarify for students that Hirsch's poem was written in 1982, almost sixty years after Hopper's painting, and ask them to look for evidence of this different perspective. Ask them what details from each work can be read as addressing the subject of America. You can put those three categories (industrialism, the railroad, the landscape) on the board and list those aspects of each work that can fall under each.

• An initial writing project can be the accumulation of all student work here to date in the shape of a brief essay comparing the Hopper and the Hirsch.
• Students might write a comparison of two (or more) of the other artworks mentioned in this lesson plan.

• Students can write a poem inspired by an image provided by student—a photo of someplace important to them, a painting they've always loved, etc. You may want to urge them to include both explicit and implicit subjects and to carefully consider mood, tone, and imagery.
• Look at other poetry inspired by Hopper in The Poetry of Solitude: A Tribute to Edward Hopper, collected and introduced by Gail Levin (New York: Universe Publishing, 1995).
• Look at other works of landscape/cityscape art that might inspire a poem with a similar/opposing view.
• Listen to Hirsch at poets.org
• Record students' performance of their own poems (i.e., provide the option to make music or performance the other art).
• Students can create a work of graphic art based on their reading of a poem. If you want to stick with the historical themes touched on in this lesson plan, students might consider these poets at the Academy of American Poets or the Poetry Foundation: the quintessential American poet, Walt Whitman; Hart Crane, who in the Academy of American Poet's term, "used the landscape of the modern, industrialized city to create a powerful new symbolic literature"; or Hopper's contemporary (and one much concerned with the concept of industry), Robert Frost.

Website Links

• Artist/Artwork
  • Picturing America Teachers Resource Guide on Edward Hopper, House by the Railroad, 1925
  • The Museum of Modern Art’s web page on Hopper’s House by the Railroad has a further link to six other paintings by Hopper held by the museum.
  • The Smithsonian American Art Museum online exhibit, An Edward Hopper Scrapbook, has links to pages detailing his art, friends, shows, and other areas of interest. For information on House by the Railroad go to the Featured Art page through the art link.
  • The Tate Modern's online exhibit, Edward Hopper, has pages featuring an artist chronology, an illustrated timeline of Hopper’s works, and an online viewer of the artist’s sketchbook, begun in the 1940s, which can be scrolled through.
  • First comprehensive exhibit of the works of Edward Hopper in America in more than twenty-five years at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (May 6–August 7, 2007); the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., (September 16, 2007–January 21, 2008); and the Art Institute of Chicago (February 16–May 11, 2008). The show and online venues include works from the exhibit, a biography, and other special features. The National Gallery has produced a special documentary film on the artist narrated by Steve Martin. (Information on its online availability is unknown at this time.)
• History/Social Studies
  • University of Houston collaborative project, Digital History, features online textbook chapter links to topics in the 1930s, including hyperlinked pages, Why it Happened, The Human Toll, The Dispossessed, The National Recovery Administration, and African Americans and the New Deal.
  • History/Social Studies (Teachers’ Guide)
    • The National Council on Economic Education’s Website, EconEdlink, has a lesson plan page for Grades 9-12, Where Did All the Money Go? The Great Depression Mystery, asks students to consider the conditions that led up to the Great Depression; key economic concepts include interdependence, savings, and supply.

Selected EDSITEment Websites

• Museum of Fine Arts in Boston
  • Edward Hopper: The Artist
• National Gallery of Art
  • Edward Hopper
• Art Institute of Chicago
  • Edward Hopper Exhibition
• Smithsonian American Art Museum
  • An Edward Hopper Scrapbook
• Academy of American Poets
  • Edward Hirsch
    • Edward Hirsch, "The Widening Sky" (audio clip)
    • Edward Hirsch, "How to Read a Poem"
• Poetry Foundation
  • Edward Hirsch