In Edward Hopper's seductively voyeuristic "New York Interior", a young girl framed in a flat window - glimpsed, perhaps, from a passing elevated train - sits on her bed with her back to the viewer, sewing a length of cloudy cloth spread across her lap. She is only partially dressed. She may be listening to music or talking to someone through an open door. In a second she can get up to answer the phone. See more
She can do a thousand things. But in the way Hopper painted her, she becomes an isolated study - like most of his paintings.
This unconventional view suggests the impersonal - yet strangely intimate - quality of modern urban life, seen voyeuristically through a window. The woman's clothing and gestures recall the iconic ballet dancers painted by the French impressionist Edgar Degas, whom Hopper named as the artist whose work he most admired.