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East Wind Over Weehawken is an oil painting by American realist artist Edward Hopper. The painting is done on canvas and measures 34 x 50.2 inches.
He painted the piece during the winter of 1934 in the time of the great depression and this was the only piece created by Hopper that year. It came two years after his previous piece was released, named Room In New York.
The work features a street scene including four houses which are located on the corner of 49th street in Weehawken, New Jersey. In 2013, Brooklyn painter Stephen Gardner was commissioned to create a modern remake of the painting for a parent-teacher charity in Weehawken, showing the scene as it was in the modern day.
The remake was sold on Ebay for $510 to Ligia Builes, who owns the house in the painting.
The original was first owned by the Frank K.M Rehn Galleries, the gallerist of Hopper at the time. In 1952, the Pennsylvania Academy Of Fine Arts acquired the painting for what was reported to be a very low price.
They held the painting for a very long time, until they decided to sell in 2013, with the hope of reaching the estimate put on the piece, which was $22-28 million. The money made on the sale would be used to fill some gaps in their collections and to invest in new contemporary art.
The piece sold for $36 million (a total of $40.5 million including auction fees) at Christie's auction room in New York. The buyer was an anonymous telephone bidder and the fee received became a record for a Hopper piece. The previous record sale was $26.9 million which was paid for Hotel Window in 2009.