An iconic image of big-city loneliness, Nighthawks is perhaps Edward Hopper’s best-known painting, but it was his cheerier The Mansard Roof that put him on the map. The light-filled watercolor depicts a real-life sea captain’s mansion that still stands in the Rocky Neck neighborhood of Gloucester, Massachusetts, where the artist painted a number of other prominent Victorian homes during his summers in the seaside city in the 1920s. You can find pictures of some of these homes and learn more about Gloucester's inspiration for Hopper in an interesting piece on npr.org.

Then relatively unknown, Hopper got $100 for The Mansard Roof in 1923. Today, the watercolor is part of a retrospective show of Hopper’s work at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

The show only runs through August 19, so you’ll need to hurry to catch this rare exhibition of Hopper’s work, with nearly 100 of the artist’s most celebrated paintings, watercolors, and prints.


To find out more about Hopper and his work The Mansard Roof, click here.