Cape Cod Evening

Hopper finished this canvas on 30 July 1939 in his studio at South Truro on Cape Cod, where he and his wife Jo spent six months of most years. He said it showed no real place. The locust grove came from sketches of nearby trees, the doorway from a house in Orleans, about 20 miles away, and the tall dry grass was what he saw from his studio window at the end of summer.

The collie gave him trouble. He could not find one in Truro, so he went to the town library to look the breed up in an encyclopedia. When he and Jo got back and parked, a collie climbed out of the car just ahead of theirs, and Jo held it while he sketched. Her record book says the picture was nearly called Whippoorwill, after the bird that calls at dusk. Hopper said the dog was listening to something, probably a whippoorwill or some other evening sound.