Type: Oil on canvas
Canvas Size: 76.2 x 106.7 cm
Location: Private collection, Washington, D.C.
© Estate of Edward Hopper

The scene is a verandah at night. Two youngsters dressed in post-War style are standing in the wan light.it is not, surely, a sad scene of disappointed love; but it is certainly a richly ambivalent scene. The two people are lit as if they were on a stage, almost defenseless and yet with a manifest self-confidence. They are meeting on a clearly defined, circumscribed territory, and the final frontier in Man's onward progress involves conquest of a woman's body.

The composition and colours in the work suggest a symbolist element in Hopper's art. It is not that specific meanings can be attached to identifiable symbols in this painting; but Hopper's evocative method allusively implies narrative contexts and experiential frameworks.

Source: Edward Hopper - Taschen: Basic Art Album Series Book