Edward Hopper
Who
American painter of empty streets, lit windows and people not talking to each other. Worked as a commercial illustrator until his forties; Nighthawks was painted when he was 59.
Why they matter
He is the painter of American loneliness and of the way electric light looks at night, and his compositions have been borrowed by film-makers from Hitchcock onward.
What to buy
Still in copyright: reproductions are licensed through the Whitney and the estate, so buy from museum shops or established print retailers rather than marketplace sellers. Books: Taschen's Hopper is the standard cheap monograph. Originals: his etchings of the 1910s-20s, which he printed himself, come up at Swann a few times a year and are the one Hopper thing a private collector can realistically own.
Notes
The Whitney holds over 3,000 works from the bequest of his widow, Josephine Nivison Hopper. Not public domain: no free image archive is linked here.
Key works
- Nighthawks (1942) - Art Institute of Chicago
- Early Sunday Morning (1930) - Whitney Museum, New York
- Automat (1927) - Des Moines Art Center
- Chop Suey (1929) - private collection
In museum collections
- Nighthawks (1942)
Art Institute of Chicago ↗ - Early Sunday Morning (1930)
Whitney Museum ↗ - Gas (1940)
MoMA ↗ - House by the Railroad (1925)
MoMA ↗ - New York Movie (1939)
MoMA ↗ - Office in a Small City (1953)
The Met ↗ - Hotel Lobby (1943)
Indianapolis Museum of Art ↗ - Second Story Sunlight (1960)
Whitney Museum ↗ - Ground Swell (1939)
National Gallery of Art ↗ - Coast Guard Station, Two Lights, Maine (1927)
The Met ↗ - White River at Sharon (1937)
Smithsonian American Art Museum ↗ - A Woman in the Sun (1961)
Whitney Museum ↗
See the work
Prints
Books
Originals
See also
Browse all 2,101 artists · Open in the directory · Where the work hangs: 44 museums on a map