Nighthawks (1942)
Art Institute of Chicago
Three customers and a white-clad server in a brightly lit corner diner on a dark, empty street, a "Phillies" cigar sign above
Image: Edward Hopper · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Art
Edward Hopper
1882–1967 · American
American Realism
Edward Hopper was the great painter of modern American loneliness. His quiet scenes of diners, offices, hotel rooms, petrol stations and empty streets, lit by stark electric light or raking sunlight, capture isolation in the modern city and small town, and have deeply influenced film and photography.
How to spot them
- ▸Solitary or silent figures — often a woman — in diners, cafés, hotel rooms, cinemas or at windows, not interacting
- ▸Strong, hard-edged light: a glow spilling from a window at night, or long early-morning shadows on bare buildings
- ▸Simplified, geometric American architecture: shopfronts, Victorian houses, railway lines, lighthouses, gas pumps
- ▸Quiz clue words: urban isolation, a voyeuristic view through a window, his wife Jo as model
Key works
Automat (1927)
Des Moines Art Center, Iowa
A lone woman in a cloche hat stares into her coffee cup in an automat at night, rows of lights reflected in the black window
Image: Edward Hopper · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Early Sunday Morning (1930)
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
An empty row of shops and flats in low morning sun, with a barber's pole and fire hydrant and no people
Image: Edward Hopper · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
House by the Railroad (1925)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
A lonely Victorian mansion cut off by a railway track; inspired the Bates house in Hitchcock's Psycho
Image: Edward Hopper · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
New York Movie (1939)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
A pensive blonde usherette leans against the wall beside the aisle of a dim cinema
Image: Edward Hopper · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Chop Suey (1929)
Private collection
Two women in hats face each other at a table in a Chinese restaurant; sold for $91.9 million in 2018
Image: Edward Hopper · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Quick-fire facts
- •Born in Nyack, New York, in 1882; died in his New York studio in 1967
- •Studied at the New York School of Art under Robert Henri
- •Worked for years as a commercial illustrator before his painting career took off in the 1920s
- •His wife, the painter Josephine (Jo) Nivison, posed for almost all the women in his later paintings
- •House by the Railroad was the first painting acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, in 1930
- •The Art Institute of Chicago bought Nighthawks in 1942, the year it was painted
- •Jo Hopper bequeathed his artistic estate to the Whitney Museum, which holds the largest collection of his work
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Sources
- Art Institute of Chicago — Nighthawks
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Edward Hopper
- Wikipedia — Edward Hopper