Edward Hopper | Artnet

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Edward Hopper was a seminal American artist famous for his oil paintings and watercolors of both rural and city scenes. He often used strongly contrasting light and dark tones to create cinematic moods. In the iconic painting Nighthawks (1942), Hopper portrayed a starkly lit Manhattan diner with all the drama of a film-noir. Along with these nocturnes, the artist also made airy canvases depicting the coasts of Cape Cod and other New England villages. 'Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world,' he once mused. Born on July 22, 1882 in Nyack, NY, Hopper began his artistic studies sketching steamboats on the Hudson River as a youth. He went on to train as a commercial illustrator before transferring to the New York School of Art. Here he studied painting under William Merrit Chase and Robert Henri alongside his peer George Bellows. In 1905, Hopper began working at an advertising agency as an illustrator for trade magazine covers—work he notably detested, but continued out of financial necessity. In 1923, after years of working in illustration, he sold six watercolors to the Brooklyn Museum, the funds enabling him to devote himself entirely to painting. From the late 1920s onward, he produced works which created the coherent style and mood he's known for today, ranging from Automat (1927) to Second Story Sunlight (1960). Hopper died on May 15, 1967 in New York, NY. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Tate Gallery in London, among others.