Edward Hopper

One of the most important American realist painters of the twentieth century, Edward Hopper is widely known for his somber and serene landscapes, cityscapes and isolated figures. Born in upstate New York, Hopper studied at the New York School of Art before making trips to Europe between 1906 and 1910, which greatly influenced his style. Taking in the light, architecture and grand artistic traditions of cities like Paris, Hopper was inspired by fellow painters such as Claude Monet, Francisco Goya, and Diego Velazquez. His first show was held in 1919, and he began to establish himself with strait-forward but emotive oil works that captured American motifs, structures and narratives. His most well known work, which currently resides in the Art Institute of Chicago Building, is undoubtedly the 1942 nightscape Nighthawks, which depicts a late night diner bathed in glowing yellow light. Working through the 1930s and 1940s, Hopper spent a great deal of time in Cape Cod, Massachusetts where he visited and painted local locations and attractions.

As the Abstract Expressionist movement grew in the 1950s, Hopper’s figurative work began to lose favor with critics, however the artist remained steadfast in his style and has since been lauded for both his importance as one of the great American painters and a influence on later generations of artists. His work is found in many major museum collections and has been the subject of retrospectives and exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany, Tate Modern, London, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., and Grand Palais, Paris, among others. Hopper passed away in 1967 in New York City.