Edward Hopper, Hotel Room, 1931, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, Spain. Detail.
Hotel Room by Edward Hopper is a masterpiece of American Realism that explores timeless themes of loneliness, isolation, and narrative. Hopper’s use of light and space turns an ordinary scene into a powerful reflection on solitude.
Edward Hopper, Hotel Room, 1931, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, Spain.
Edward Hopper (1882–1967) was one of the leading American Realist painters of the 20th century. He successfully evoked the national mood during the Great Depression (1929–1939) through his atmospheric depictions of loneliness, isolation, and melancholy. His work has often been compared to that of Thomas Eakins, another prominent 19th-century American artist, for its realistic and raw portrayals of modern American life. Since World War I, American society has been struggling with a gradual decline of identity, community, and connection. Individualism has increased to the point of isolation. Hotel Room is a Hopper masterpiece highlighting these typical modern American themes.
Edward Hopper, Hotel Room, 1931, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, Spain. Detail.
The Hotel Room is a large oil on canvas, measuring 152.4 × 165.7 cm (5 ft. × 5 ft. 5 in.). It presents a single figure sitting in a sparsely furnished hotel room. The furniture consists of a bed, a chair, and a chest of drawers. A single window fills the far wall with a simple yellow shade and a white curtain. The woman sits partially undressed, in her slip, with a yellow piece of paper in her hand. She appears lost in thought.
Edward Hopper, Hotel Room, 1931, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, Spain. Detail.
Josephine Nivison, later Josephine Hopper, was the supportive wife and figurative model for Edward Hopper during his artistic career. Many of his paintings feature women resembling Josephine; Hotel Room is one among them. She posed for this painting in their Washington Square studio as early as 1929, when Hopper sketched her in a similar pose. According to her journal, the yellow paper in her hand is a train timetable. Therefore, the painting has a storied context. The nameless woman is holding a train timetable and pondering the upcoming trains, destinations, and times. But why—and for what purpose?
Edward Hopper, Hotel Room, 1931, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, Spain. Detail.
The woman sits alone. The window in the background reveals a bottom border of pitch black space, suggesting that the scene takes place late at night. Therefore, the woman is spending the night in this hotel room, alone, and probably departs tomorrow. She is so exhausted that she has not bothered to unpack her two cases, which lie at the base of the green armchair.
Edward Hopper, Hotel Room, 1931, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, Spain. Detail.
The woman’s clothing is placed around the room haphazardly. Her black hat is perched on the top edge of the dark wooden dresser. Her patterned dress is draped over the arms of the chair. Her shoes are cast to the floor against the dresser base. The woman slouches in just her slip—a feminine undergarment popular in the 1930s to protect the outer clothing from perspiration, to provide a flattering silhouette, and to prevent intimate undergarments like an underwear and a brassiere from showing. Therefore, the woman has stripped her clothing and travelwear, and exhaustedly sits on the bed before showering and finishing her evening.
Edward Hopper, Hotel Room, 1931, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, Spain. Detail.
While the hotel room is a safe refuge for the night, it is also ironically a vulnerable place for a single person. Traveling alone has its benefits and pleasures, but it poses its own risks, too. With the harsh artificial lighting, sparse interior, and sharp diagonal line of the bed implying space, the small cloistered room is presented like a theater stage. The view is almost like an audience or more perversely like a voyeur as he (the assumed heterosexual male gaze) admires this partially disrobed woman who is beautiful, thoughtful, but vulnerably alone.
Edward Hopper, Hotel Room, 1931, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, Spain. Detail.
A certain sadness, almost melancholy, infuses Hopper’s works. They feel timeless, in the sense of time stopping. Time suspended. Tranquility reigns supreme: a melancholic tranquility that freezes the scene into an iconic moment of thoughtfulness. His open-ended narratives and pictorial style have even influenced literature and cinema, especially classic film noir of the 1940s and 1950s. They are evocative of physical solitude and spiritual remoteness.
Edward Hopper, Hotel Room, 1931, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, Spain. Detail.
Hopper leaves the viewer guessing at the underlying story behind the frozen moments. Hotel Room captures one such frozen moment. What is the significance of the train timetable? Where is the destination? What is her motive? Ultimately, the viewer is left imagining the story, and this sense of mystery and imagination continues to attract generations of admirers to Hopper’s works. Timeless fascination.
10,000 Years of Art, Phaidon Press Limited, London 2009.
Hotel Room, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum Online Collection. Retrieved 4 October 2025.
Wendy Beckett and Patricia Wright: Sister Wendy’s 1000 Masterpieces, Dorling Kindersley Limited, London 1999.
Helen Gardner, Fred S. Kleiner, and Christin J. Mamiya: Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, 12th ed., Thomson Wadsworth, Belmont 2005.
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James W. Singer is an art historian and fine art photographer. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from the University of Florida. He later moved to Paris, France. He currently writes “Masterpiece” articles for DailyArt Magazine.
As an educator, writer, and neurodivergent creative, I enjoy learning and sharing through nature, the arts and novel experiences.
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