Before turning 40, in 1922, Edward Hopper’s career as a painter was not a success: he’d sold just one painting. But the following year, upon his second journey to Gloucester, Massachusetts, his style changed. It was there that he began to paint sailing vessels with the ennui and isolation that characterized his later work. It seems he found silent poetry in seascape, sailboats, and narrow streets. Following the recent Whitney retrospective, which focused on Hopper’s dreamlike depictions of the hustle and bustle of New York, this once-in-a-generation retrospective hones in on a formative period that, until now, was largely ignored. —Elena Clavarino