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Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967)
was an United States|American painter best
remembered for his eerily realistic depictions of
solitude in contemporary American life. 

Born in Nyack, New York|Nyack, New York, Hopper
studied commercial art and painting in New York
City. One of his teachers, artist Robert Henri,
encouraged his students to use their art to "make
a stir in the world." Henri, an influence on
Hopper, motivated students to render realistic
depictions of urban life. Henri's students, many
of whom developed into important artists, became
known as the Ashcan School of American art. 

Upon completing his formal education, Hopper made
three trips to Europe to study the emerging art
scene there, but unlike many of his contemporaries
who imitated the abstract cubist experiments, the
idealism of the realist painters enamored Hopper.
His early projects reflect the realist influence.

While he worked for several years as a commercial
artist, Hopper continued painting. In 1925 he
produced House by the Railroad, a classic work
that marks his artistic maturity. The piece is the
first of a series of stark urban and rural scenes
which use sharp lines and large shapes, played
upon by unusual lighting to capture the lonely
mood of his subjects. He derived his subject
matter from the common features of American life
— gas stations, motels, the railroad, or an
empty street. 

The best known of these paintings, Nighthawks
(1942), shows the lonely customers frequenting a
downtown all-night diner. The diner's harsh
electric lights set it off from the gentle night
outside. The diners, seated at stools around the
counter, are similarly isolated from one another,
leaving the viewer to wonder what led them to the
diner late at night. 

Hopper's rural New England scenes, such as
http://americanart.si.edu/collections/exhibits/hop
per/p22-gas.html Gas (1940), are no less wistful.
In terms of subject matter, he can be compared to
his contemporary, Norman Rockwell, but while
Rockwell exalted in the rich imagery of small-town
America, Hopper depicts it in the same sense of
forlorn solitude that permeates his portrayal of
city life. Here too, Hopper's work exploits vast
empty spaces, represented by a lonely gas station
astride an empty country road and the sharp
contrast between the natural light of the sky,
moderated by the lush forest, and glaring
artificial light coming from inside the gas
station. 

Hopper died in 1967, in his studio near Washington
Square Park|Washington Square, in New York City.
His wife, the painter Josephine Nivison who died
10 months later, bequeathed his work to the
Whitney Museum of American Art. Other significant
paintings by Hopper are at the Museum of Modern
Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago.

In 2004, a large selection of Hopper's paintings
toured through Europe, visiting Cologne, Germany
and Tate Modern in London. The Tate exhibition
became the second most popular in the gallery's
history, with 420,000 visitors in the three months
it was open.

==External links==

*http://americanart.si.edu/collections/exhibits/ho
pper/ An Edward Hopper Scrapbook, compiled by the
staff of the http://americanart.si.edu Smithsonian
American Art Museum
*http://www.artinthepicture.com/artists/Edward_Hop
per/ Artinthepicture.com: Edward Hopper - A brief
introduction to the life of  Hopper
*http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/hopper/
about.htm Hopper exhibition at Tate 2004
*http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hopper/
Hopper at the WebMuseum