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Nighthawks is a 1942 oil-on-canvas painting by the American artist Edward Hopper that portrays four people in a downtown diner late at night as viewed through the diner's large glass window. The light coming from the diner illuminates a darkened and deserted urban streetscape.
About Nighthawks Edward Hopper recollected, “unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city.” In an all-night diner, three customers sit at the counter opposite a server, each appear to be lost in thought and disengaged from one another.
Nighthawks is a 1942 painting by Edward Hopper that portrays people sitting in a downtown diner late at night. It is Hopper's most famous work and is one of the most recognizable paintings in American art.
Nighthawks is a painting by Edward Hopper completed in 1942. It was inspired by imagining what it would be like to come across a brightly lit diner in the middle of the night, with people—the “nighthawks”—within.
Edward Hopper said that “Nighthawks” was inspired by “a restaurant on New York’s Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet,” but the image—with its carefully constructed composition and...
Mar 24, 2020 · What many people do not know is that Nighthawks was Hopper’s response to one of the greatest crises of his generation: the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the entrance of the United States into World War II.
Edward Hopper said that Nighthawks was inspired by “a restaurant on New York’s Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet,” but the image—with its carefully constructed composition and lack of narrative—has a timeless, universal quality that transcends its particular locale.
Nighthawks exemplifies Hopper’s facility at capturing the reality of modern life and representing emotional states through physical settings. It is a quiet, introspective picture. The architecture defines the composition, and the light orders, balances, and clarifies it.
Nighthawks is one of Hopper’s New York City paintings, and the artist said that it was based on a real café. Many people have tried to find the exact setting of the painting, but have failed.
Where are they going? Who is the man with his back to us? How did he end up in the diner? What is the waiter’s life like? What is causing his distress? The light. By setting the scene on one of New York City’s oblique corners and surrounding the diner with glass, Hopper was able to exploit stark pictorial devices.
