Title of Artwork: “Tables for Ladies”

Artwork by Edward Hopper

Year Created 1930

Summary of Tables for Ladies

As the title suggests, “Tables for Ladies” places you right outside the front window of a typical New York City restaurant. Viewers are drawn into an interior of polished wood, tiled floors, and wall mirrors, where a man and woman eat and a cashier takes care of business at her register while the waitress adjusts the menu cards in the window display.

All About Tables for Ladies

In the studio, Hopper used sketches he had made of local restaurants to paint this large canvas. However, despite the bright lighting and the warm, even garish, colours, this is not a merry scene at all.

Cashier and waitress have their own thoughts as they serve the customers, but the conversation between the two is interrupted by the conversation between the two customers. In many of his works, Hopper alludes to the feelings of isolation and exhaustion that many people in urban areas go through.

Hopper was reluctant to place his work in the context of the era, but this painting speaks to several social shifts of the time. A cashier or a waitress, for example, is a woman who works outside the home in a new role that was represented by this image.

Dining establishments began advertising “tables for ladies” to welcome women who had recently moved out on their own as a recent social innovation. It was previously assumed that women who dined alone or with other women in restaurants and bars were prostitutes in search of business; now, women who dine alone or with other women will be treated with respect.

At a time when many Americans could not afford to dine out, even at a modest restaurant like this one like Hopper was living in New York during the Great Depression.

Information Citations

En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.