Nighthawks
Nighthawks is a supreme example of Hopper’s characteristic subject matter and manner of handling it. He named it one Tjf his favourites among his own works, and said that it was “suggested by a restaurant on Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet, Nighthawks seems to be the way I think of- a night street. (…) 1 simplified the scene a great deal and made the restaurant bigger. Unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city.”
The painting has been well analyzed by Hopper’s friend and biographer, Lloyd Goodrich: “The lunch counter is an oasis of light in the midnight city; strong light falls on the interior and its four occupants, separating them from the outside world; out there, the subdued light of an unseen street lamp shows dark, empty stores. In the play of these two lights against surrounding darkness lies much of the painting’s impact. (…) Here, as in other similar works, light and form work in coordination. In all these night scenes it is the interplay of lights from various directions and in varying colours and intensities that creates pictorial drama. (…) The strong wedge of the restaurant, thrusting from right to left like the bow of a ship, is countered by the solid row of buildings at right angles to it. Here the moving wedge is met by a static mass. No main planes are parallel to the surface of the painting, as they are in Early Sunday Morning; and hence no main lines are parallel to the rectangular frame, and none are purely horizontal.” The colour accentuates the separation of exterior and interior. Within, the light yellows of ceiling and wall and the green of the tile and fluted pillar contrast with the girl’s strawberry-blond hair and red dress, the counterman’s white cap and uniform, and the silvery glint on the coffee urns. The restaurant’s exterior is an almost undifferentiated dark blue, with tan lettering on the dark brown signboard above. The buildings at (he left are a dull, dark rust, with green blinds and door- and window-frames; the green of the pavement is modulated by the play of shadows and reflected lights.
(Jean Upman and Helen M. Franc. Bright Slars. American Painting and Sculpture Since 1776)

Light always plays an essential role in Hopper’s work. Its exact nature, its colour, its source and direction, are as lullyJ realized as the objects on which it falls. It is a dynamic element-’ in a pictorial concept. Sunlight on the city’s stone and concrete structures simplifies and unifies them, turning them into massive monoliths, and casting heavy dark shadows that have a somber brooding effect. Light reveals the character of< buildings, their ornamentation, the colour and texture of their surfaces. It creates strong patterns of shadow and light. It] acts as an integral part of the design. In a work such as Pennsylvania Coal Town the alteration of lighted and shadowed planes, producing a powerful repeated pattern, is one of the chief motifs.
In his night scenes light becomes the principal actor. In Drug Store he has taken one of the city’s commonest sights, a lighted store window, and by realizing to the full the pictorial effectiveness of brilliant vary-coloured light seen against darkness, has produced a work of extraordinary excitement, even glamour.
His colour is as personal as everything else in his style. Colour as decoration, as a sensuous language, or as emotional expression, does not interest him; it must be intimately associated with light and form. But it is an essential element in his work. It is Ear from monochromatic; on the contrary, everything is seen in chromatic terms. His colour is based on direct observation of nature, without regard to formulas or to considerations of conventional taste. It has a first-hand, pristine force that is sometimes startling. Especially noticeable in his landscapes is his use of cool colours in a wide range of blues and greens, balanced by warmer hues. His palette is not the high-keyed impressionist one;- it ranges all the way down to deep tones, even in outdoor subjects. In certain paintings colour is pushed to a maximum impact. In Nighthawks, for example, the vivid colours of the interior under intense light are juxtaposed to strong dark exterior tones; there are hardly any grays, almost all the colours are positive. The result is arresting: a full-bodied power in keeping with the other elements in the

There are never any crowds, never the hurrying tide of humanity {…) Often he chooses the hours when few or no People are abroad. Early Sunday Morning is an empty street More anyone is up, with a row of identical houses. The vastness, Monotony and loneliness of the city have seldom been as
intensely conveyed. But the final emotion is affirmative; clear morning sunlight, stillness, and a sense of solitude that is poignant! yet serene. Like many of his compositions this gives’the sensation! that the scene does not stop at the edges of the picture, that thesej buildings continue for blocks on either side. The strong horizontal’! lines and the repetition of elements carry the eye and mind ou« of the composition, convincing us that this slice of life is part ON a larger whole. {,,.)
In many of his city paintings individual men and women do appear, but as parts of the whole scene rather than in leading roles. The woman going to bed, the couple in a restaurant the j solitary passerby in a street at night, are integral elements in his version of the city, but their settings are as important: as they are. They are portrayed without much individual characterization. Often they seem isolated in the wide impersonality of the city; they seem to epitomize the lonely life of the city dweller, the solitude that can be experienced most intensely among millions.
The closest intimacy is attained in his scenes of women in city interiors, nude or half-dressed — a favourite theme since the etching Evening Wind, later developed in a series of paintings up to recent years, such as Eleven A. M., Night Windows, Hotel Room, Morning in a City, and Morning Sun. Always she appears in completely realistic circumstances, dressing or undressing; and often she is before a window, looking out — tha intimacy of her nakedness contrasting with the impersonal city outside. There is never any academic idealization; nor on] the orher hand, any obvious sexiness. She is portrayed with complete honesty, but also with devoted care in giving her solid physical existence and a statuesque roundness. (. ..)

EDWARD HOPPER
(1882—1967)
Hopper’s style was highly individual. He developed a basic and economic version of objective realism, shaped in bold, simple, solid forms in sharp clear light. His subject matter, was the face of the American city and countryside. He painted the city and small town, village, streets and old houses, cinema theatres and diners with a drastic realism and a deep emotional attachment. His paintings often convey a haunting sense of loneliness and unfulfilment.
The physical face of America, seen with complete candour, is- the material of Edward Hopper’s art. But with all his objectivity he is essentially a poet — one who finds his poetry less often in nature than in man’s creations, in the structures and cities man has built and among which his life is spent. Hopper’s work is an intense expression of that poetry of places which has been a theme of artists through the centuries, from Guardi to Meryon.
Born in 1882 at Nyack, N. Y., studying art in New York, Hopper made three trips to Europe before 1910 which had little effect on his art. As early as 1908 he began painting the American scene in much the same style as today, but it was not until the 1920s that he achieved recognition.
Hopper has discovered for art those man-made features which we now see as most characteristic of American landscape, but which had been shunned by his more tenter-minded predecessors. He likes American architecture in its most frankly’ native phases, especially the bare white wooden houses and churches of New England. He likes stark, structural things: factories, bridges, the simple immaculate forms of lighthouses. He likes railroads, highways, gasoline stations.
Although human beings appear in his paintings, the whole scene is what interests Hopper. In his city pictures, it is not the hurrying crowds, the traffic and movement, but the city itself — its streets, buildings, its great masses of stone and steel, its varying architecture, its myriad forms. The few human figures are parts of the scene rather than leading actors; often they seem isolated and solitary.
By contrast with impressionism, Hopper’s art is built on form. Everything is solidly constructed; the forms are massive and severely simplified; only essentials are given. His paintings are very thoughtfully designed: straight lines are stressed,” and strong contrasts of verticals and horizontals create pictorial drama. A frequent device is a straight foreground line, such as a road or railroad tracks, forming a base for the whole. His compositions are monumental rather than dynamic. Always* they possess order, balance, and total harmony.
Unlike the immaculates, an important element in his work is the mood of the .scene: the exact time and weather and light,-and the emotions which these evoke. Light plays a leading part in his pictures. The American impressionists had imported the soft air and light of France; but Hopper loves the strong sunlight, clear air and high cold skies of the northern United States. He likes the play of sunlight and shadow on white-painted houses; the precise effect of the baking noonday sun on wood, stone, brick; the low light of clear afternoons, modelling the forms of earth and houses. Often his pictures have a crystalline clarity, and give a sense of stillness and waiting, and of loneliness, penetrating and yet serene.