Edward Hopper (1882-1967)

Edward Hopper was born in Nyack, New York on July 22, 1882. He always knew that he wanted to be an artist but his parents convinced him to study commercial illustration so that he would have a steady job. He studied for seven years at the New York School of Art with Robert Henri, one of the founders of American Realism, a style that began at the end of the Civil War. Its goal was to show reality in detail, no matter how unpleasant it might be. In 1906, Hopper went to Paris, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Brussels, but the picture that had the strongest affect on him was not a modern one - it was The Night Watch painted by Rembrandt in 1642.

Hopper's initial work didn't attract much attention. From 1915-1924, he studied etching and printmaking. He moved to Greenwich Village in New York in 1925 and started doing watercolors and prints, both of which sold much better than the big oil paintings but he also completed The House by the Railroad that showed his unique style as both realistic and symbolic. His work was shown at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1929 and four years later he had his first big solo exhibition there that included 25 oil paintings, 37 watercolors, and 11 prints. Through the rest of his life, he painted New England landscapes, hotels, trains, restaurants, theatres, offices - all buildings of modern life, but almost always there was a sense of great loneliness. "The man's the work," he said. "Something doesn't come out of nothing."

One of his most famous pieces is called Nighthawks. This 76 x 152 cm canvas, painted in 1942, shows four people sitting in a diner on a dark street. Instead of the diner being a welcoming place, there is no door and the people inside look tired instead of happy. The main theme of much of his work were how big America was but still how lonely. He received an honorary Ph.D. in Fine Arts from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1950, an honorary Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1953 and many awards over the next 14 years. Hopper died in his studio in 1967.