The Bootleggers

Edward Hopper

Oil on canvas

Currier Museum of Art

This evocative oil painting depicts three men in a motorboat at dusk, staring toward a Victorian house with a mansard roof where a mysterious figure appears to watch them—a scene inspired by the rum-running activities along the Massachusetts coast during Prohibition. Edward Hopper (1882-1967), America's foremost realist painter known for "Nighthawks" and his masterful use of light to capture isolation and melancholy, created one of his most openly political works here. Though himself a light drinker, Hopper despised government restriction on social behavior, and this painting stands as a subtle act of rebellion—rendering bootleggers almost heroically in a light-colored boat against a darkening backdrop, their "forbidden enterprise" depicted with quiet dignity.