Art and cars #3 - Solved! Edward Hopper and a few Buicks

[Ray B.]

Who is he, and what car can he be associated with?

Art and cars. Painters, writers, musicians, actors, movie makers: in a nutshell, artists. Cars of special importance in their work, or in their life.
This one is worth 2 points, one for the artist, one for the car.
Rules of this puzzle is: you identify the artist, you have one week to find the car. After that, the hunt is opened and anyone can rob you of your second point.

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Also, please be sure to check out our other puzzles, and, please post a puzzle of your own if you'd like - the more, the merrier.

Thanks!

[Otto Puzzell]

Opera singer?

[Ray B.]

Not an opera singer.
I appreciate any interest in this kind of puzzle, but are you sure you're allowed to answer in this section, boss?

If there is no expert guess I'll move it upstairs soon anyway.

[Otto Puzzell]

D'oh!

I'll go sit in the corner. 

[Ray B.]

And up again.

[Otto Puzzell]

Picasso?

[Ray B.]

Not Picasso, but you're getting warmer.

[Otto Puzzell]

Norman Rockwell?

[Ray B.]

Even warmer.
Now I think this one needs some precisions. Although this man's work often appears related to the our car culture, one can find in it very very few cars, and only one or two can be identified.

[Otto Puzzell]

Ted Laws, the railroad painter?

[Otto Puzzell]

Maybe I'm off track (pun intended).

If it be Rockwell, he was featured in ads for the 1959 Lincoln.

[Ray B.]

Neither Rockwell nor Ted Laws, but he painted tracks and trains more often than cars.

[DynaMike]

Looks like an early portrait of Edward Hopper, who in 1927 earned enough money (by selling 'Two on the Aisle') to buy his first car, a two year old Dodge...

[Ray B.]

That's two points for Dynamike!
Edward Hopper it is.
But, although your 1925 Dodge answer is somehow more than I bargained for, I was more precisely asking (see a few posts above) for a car he had painted. I checked his work (I must have all of it in several books), and I count only 4 paintings with cars. In those, only 2 can be identified with some certainty (make and year).
Any one of the two will satisfy me. I hold the second point for you a week. I'm sure this will be no problem for you.

[DynaMike]

In 'Western Motel' there's a 1954 Buick; there's a non-descript car in 'Prospect Street' scene in Gloucester; and surprisingly there is no car in 'Gas'...

[Ray B.]

That was fast! The 1954 Buick was what I was after.
There are also two nondescript cars in "Cars and rocks". And Hopper's own car interior in the watercolor "Jo in Wyoming". But I've been too lazy to search with which car interior it matched.
Probably not a 1948 Ford as in the third painting (not by Hopper).

[DynaMike]

I think "Jo in Wyoming" was painted in 1946, so it cannot be a 1948 Ford. I don't know yet what it is - a bit puzzled by the three-spoke steering wheel.

[Ray B.]

Again, impossible to add the attachments I wanted tonight (Western motel, Jo in Wyoming and Edward Hopper fixes a flat). I hope it will be better tomorrow.

I think I will put a third point at stake for the puzzler who can identify, by its interior the car shown in "Jo in Wyoming".  It would solve an artistic mystery after all, so it's well worth one. Some may have the picture somewhere, but it can also be easily found on the net.
That dashboard could be a 1942-46 Ford, but if so Hopper omitted the big round speedo. And the steering wheel could be an aftermarket item, but I couldn't find one like it.
So this point will be attributed if az puzzler can produce a photo of a matching dashboard, and one of the steering wheel if it's not the original one.

[Ray B.]

The pics are finally uploaded for all of you art lovers.
Dynamike, I'll tally the points when I'll move this to the solved section. Otherwise I get mixed up.

[DynaMike]

The loadspeaker grille in the middle looks like a 1942 Ford (but those had two round clocks of which one should have been visible), and the steering wheel like a 1938 Buick (but those had a flat loadspeaker grille)... Artistic freedom ?

[DynaMike]

At the end, it did work to get the pics in my post...

[Ray B.]

One sure thing is: whatever the make, I know what model this is and I'm gonna ask for it.

[Ehhxekt]

I don't know what model it is but I think I know the make: the car in which Mrs Hopper is sitting and working on her picture looks like a Buick, just as DynaMike suggested, only from a year later: 1939. (As far as I know, the Hoppers did own a '39 Buick.)

[Ray B.]

Ehhxekt, you are right!
We can see that Hopper painted the steering wheel very exactly, but that he didn't bother to paint the fine chrome lines around the instruments. A 1939 Buick it is (I don't know where you found that the Hoppers owned one, I didn't go to the extent of reading all my books to check that, but you've brought out the proof). If he also owned the 1954 from "Western Motel" his also tends to prove that Hopper especially liked Buicks.

I said I knew what  model it was because I believed I recognized the plywood inner door panel of a station wagon. But Buick didn't make woodies in 1939, although I didn't check if some coachbuilder offered one. But as you can see on this picture of the interior of a Special, what Hopper painted can also be the door panel of a sedan. So, let's forget about the model.

This is amazing. History in the making.
Two points for Dynamike, one for Ehhxekt.