In Paris, Hopper show is smash hit with 780,000 visitors

A smash-hit Paris exhibition of works by US artist Edward Hopper closed Sunday after attracting more than 780,000 visitors in less than four months, AFP reports. Demand was so feverish that the Grand Palais stayed open all night on Friday and Saturday. Museum officials said 40,000 art lovers flocked to the show over the weekend up to the closing bell at 11:00 pm on Sunday. The exceptional opening hours put Hopper on a par with Picasso and Monet, the subjects of previous Grand Palais blockbusters in 2008-09 and 2010-11. Overall since the show opened on October 10, it drew some 782,000 visitors, putting it just behind the Picasso collection at 783,000. It was no match for the Monet retrospective, however, which had 913,000 visitors. Hopper (1882-1967) is celebrated for the mastery of light and atmosphere displayed in "Nighthawks", a melancholy late-night bar scene, "Morning Sun", which depicts a woman sitting on a bed by a window, and his many landscapes from the US East Coast.