Hopper painted this interior during a stay in a boarding house in Rockland, Maine, where his interest was caught by the parlor—a cluttered room whose furniture included a pump organ, a heavy carved chair, and busy patterned carpets, all in an old-fashioned Victorian style. The parlor was traditionally a room for entertaining guests, but Hopper showed this one as empty, abandoned by its occupants. Like the home from the same era pictured in his painting House by the Railroad, the room stands as a symbol of an earlier time, one out of sync with a quickly modernizing America.
Gallery label from American Modern: Hopper to O'Keeffe, August 17, 2013–January 26, 2014 .
