Nighthawks, c.1942

Edward Hopper (1882 – 1967) was an American painter known for his melancholy depictions of alienation in everyday life. Eerily realistic, his stark urban and rural scenes are a desolate montage of deserted streets, half-empty theaters, isolated railroad tracks and dreary rooming houses. Originally aspiring to be a Naval architect, Hopper rapidly rose to the status of America’s foremost Realist. Portraying scenes in New York and New England, Hopper underscored their grim nature with sharp lines, large, impersonal shapes, flat expanses of color and hard angles. Although known for his oil paintings, Hopper was also an adept watercolorist and printmaker whose later works shared structural similarities with geometric abstraction.