Hopper’s Lighthouse Painting Tops $4 Million at Auction

A small oil portrait of a Maine lighthouse has just set a new record, fetching $4. 1 million in an auction that surprised many experts. The piece, measuring only nine by twelve inches, was sold by Sotheby’s in New York for a final bid of $3. 3 million; after adding the buyer’s premium, the total climbed to more than four million dollars. The sale came as part of a larger event that also featured works by giants such as Magritte, Dali, Matisse, Picasso and O’Keeffe. The painting was created by Edward Hopper during his trips to Monhegan Island between 1916 and 1919. Although Hopper died in 1967, the work stayed within one family from 1974 until this week. It shows the lighthouse and nearby buildings that now belong to the Monhegan Museum of Art and History. In fact, the museum’s permanent displays are housed in the former keeper’s house that appears in the canvas. The image even inspired museum officials to reconstruct a replica of an assistant keeper’s house that had been demolished in the 1920s.Hopper never owned a summer home in Maine, yet he visited the state frequently and captured its scenery on canvas. In May 2025, Sotheby’s sold another Hopper work—a 1927 watercolor titled “Spurwink Church”—for just over a million dollars to an unnamed European buyer. That painting, which depicts a modest church on Route 77 in Cape Elizabeth, still stands today. Another of Hopper’s lighthouse scenes, “The Lighthouse at Two Lights” (1929), is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection. Over decades, “Monhegan Lighthouse” has been displayed at institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, SFMOMA, and the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland. Its estimated value before auction ranged from $1. 2 million to $1. 8 million, according to Sotheby’s senior vice president Stefany Sekara Morris. The estimate was based on recent sales of Hopper’s works and the high demand for his coastal subjects, which rarely appear at auction. Hopper, born in Nyack, New York, is best known for “Nighthawks” (1942), a quiet night scene set in a diner. He first visited Monhegan under the encouragement of his teacher, Robert Henri, who had discovered the Midcoast Maine island and invited artists like Rockwell Kent, George Bellows, and Hopper to paint there.