We may have to accept the fact that Hopper painted the sad clown smoking a cigarette in the café because he felt it to be a poignant scene. He was so moved by the depressed clown that he went and painted one of the silliest paintings of the era.
Well, his teacher Robert Henri urged his students to paint what interested them in life. Maybe Hopper just found the scene interesting and painted it. I don't myself find the painting silly at all. What makes it seem less than first-rate is that Hopper (he was only 22 when he painted it) doesn't seem to have yet got down his skill in painting light (though otherwise, the work exhibits most of what characterizes his mature work). Hopper once said that the subject of his painting was light, and while that seems a bit of an exaggeration (or oversimplification), it is his treatment of light that accounts for much of the effect of his paintings.
Edward Byrne's poem “Summer Evening: Truro, 1947” in Seeded Light seems to me to offer better insight into Hopper and his work.
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