Hopper’s “Corn Hill”

There is a beautiful bluff in Truro, Massachusetts, made famous by Hopper’s “Corn Hill,” a painting painted from what is now (and may have been then) a beach parking lot off Corn Hill Road. I’ve always loved “Corn Hill” as a painting, and being a sometimes Cape Codder, have always loved Cape architecture, particularly the old summer places of past Cape Cod summer residents…homes quickly being purchased, razed, and replaced with massive architectural wonders…beautiful, many of them, but lacking the simplicity of style and timelessness as the building they replace.

Last fall I drove to Corn Hill, parked on the side of the narrow, winding road, and hiked the sandy path to the top of the hill, where the cottages stand tightly nestled one to the next. This place feels like one of the last remaining plots of “old Cape Cod” and looks much the same as I suspect it looked when Hopper painted this hill overlooking Cape Cod bay. The painting, “Periwinkle Cottage” is of one of these small, quaint row of summer retreats, and is one of a series of paintings (as is “Corn Hill”, below) inspired by this beautiful part of Cape Cod.