Nighthawks by Edward Hopper

Nighthawks

Edward Hopper

1942

American

Oil on Canvas

My very first impressions of this painting was that it was simple and ordinary. At first glance it just seems like a plain diner at the corner of a deserted street. Your eye is attracted immediately to the emphasis on the white inside the diner on the back wall, and the faded grey pavement illuminated against the darker shades within the rest of the painting.

Edward Hopper was the best known american realist during the war. He was born in the small town of Nyack, NY on July 22 1882. His family was very middle class and by 1889 he had already decided on being an artist but his parents were not thrilled about this and they tried to convince him to study commercial illustration because it seemed like it would allow him a more ensured future. He went to the NY school of illustrating but then transferred to the NY school of art. At the NY school of art he trained with Robert Henri and afterwards worked as a commercial illustrator for half of his life. Hopper sold prints and watercolors on the side but did not reach his actual artistic success until he was 43.

Nighthawks is Hopper's most famous piece of work made of oil on canvas. It is on display at the Art Institute of Chicago. This piece represents Hopper as a painter of desolation and complete solitude which is conveyed through the thick contrast of dull colors of the night and the fluorescent lights coming from the diner. Hopper sometimes painted from his closest observations of places around him which mostly include NYC and Cape Cod. Nighthawks is said to be, in Hopper's words from "a restaurant on New York's Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet." Nowadays, although this diner no longer exists, the suffering which it has endured will always be depicted through Hoppers' picture.

If you look to the building behind the diner, the orange one, there is repetition used in the windows we can see. They are all the same shape, size, and going in the same direction. It also makes your eyes move from left to right or vice versa because of the leading lines of the windows. The orange building is almost symmetrical because if you were to fold or cut it in half, it would appear to be almost identical but if you look closely there are details that are not the same. There is also placement used within the diner because it is centered to the right and vastly in front of the other building which catches your eye. It seems to jut out of the painting so it attracts you to it.

The placement of the people inside the diner makes you wonder what they are doing there in the dead of night. There is only a couple, a solemn man alone, and the waiter in the diner. The waiter appears to blend into the white background which contrasts the rest of the painting since it is so bright. Where the man alone is sitting is much darker than the rest of the diner which fits his seemingly sullen personification.