Edward Hopper’s “East Wind Over Weehawken” sold for $40.5 million at Christie’s sale of American Art in New York. That makes it the most expensive Hopper ever sold, beating the record $26.9 million for “Hotel Window,” and exceeds pre-auction estimates of $22 million to $28 million. The painting which captures the melancholy of post-Depression life in America acquired by the anonymous buyer by telephone.
In 1952, the academy in Philadelphia, bough this 1934 masterpiece from the artist’s dealer Frank K. M. Rehn for $2,750. The academy, which will receive $36 million, intends to use the funds to establish an endowment for the purchase of additional art, particularly contemporary work.
Weehawken has been shown at PAFA many times and has been included in major Hopper exhibitions elsewhere, most recently a touring European retrospective that closed this year in Paris.
