Josephine Hopper, known as Jo, was Edward’s muse, wife, and carer. Also an aspiring artist, Jo gave up her studio and moved into Edward’s smaller, dingier room in Washington Square when they married in 1924. This was the beginning of her gradual descent from the art world, becoming Edward’s carer – handling his correspondence and nagging him to paint. Her largest influence over his work is that she posed for all the women in his paintings. Each and every solitary woman depicted in Hopper’s paintings – from 1923 onward – were created on the basis of Jo; sometimes she is recognisable, sometimes entirely built anew as Edward chopped and changed aspects of her appearance to fit the piece. Despite this unfaltering support for his art, Edward did not return the favour. In-fact he ardently discouraged and belittled Jo’s own artistic career, mocking the few pieces she managed to create and, through creatively malicious means, reduced the conditions under which she might paint. Although she lived alone before marrying Edward, it seems Jo was more alone than ever in that claustrophobic Manhattan flat.

The violence which shaped and defined their relationship was often sparked by Edward’s attitude to Jo painting, and her insistence on being able to drive his car. As Olivia Laing notes in her brilliant novel ‘The Lonely City’, these potent symbols of autonomy and power were denied for Jo, she was kept securely in her place. Posed, captured, framed. This was all Jo was allowed to do in the eyes of Hopper, perhaps the intense feeling of isolation we garner from Hopper’s paintings should be attributed to his wife. Jo was only allowed to be in paintings, not paint herself, and even in most of these paintings she is unrecognisable. Beneath the altered features of these lonely women is the same woman, Jo, trapped inside each piece, recognised only for the pervading sense of loneliness which ties all Hopper’s pieces together.