"What I wanted to do," Hopper once wrote, "was to paint sunlight on the side of a house." After the sun came out, the sense of menace remained. The central sunbather in Second Story Sunlight grasps the bedsteadlike balcony; we're meant to feel that this is her "story." There's probably some allegory of aging here, of the unstoppable passage of time, but I'm more interested in those windswept trees to the right and that empty sunlit room to the left, with the yellow patch of light on the inner wall. These constitute a "second story" in which people seem almost extraneous, like expendable props in a more durable setting of light, walls, wind, and trees.