The above painting is the original (see below for more about that) my son, Ashton, was playing with a digital camera when he was about 5 years old, and I only discovered it after looking through the pictures in its memory. I was playing around one day, and decided to see if I could cut and paste Ashton looking in the window of this late night cafe, and so you have the picture that is there on the page you came from.
Art Institute of Chicago
About Nighthawks Edward Hopper recollected, “unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city.” In an all-night diner, three customers sit at the counter opposite a server, each appear to be lost in thought and disengaged from one another. The composition is tightly organized and spare in details: there is no entrance to the establishment, no debris on the streets. Through harmonious geometric forms and the glow of the diner’s electric lighting, Hopper created a serene, beautiful, yet enigmatic scene. Although inspired by a restaurant Hopper had seen on Greenwich Avenue in New York, the painting is not a realistic transcription of an actual place. As viewers, we are left to wonder about the figures, their relationships, and this imagined world.
- Artist: Edward Hopper
- Title: Nighthawks
- Place: United States
- Date: 1942
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Inscriptions: signed l.r. “Edward Hopper”
- Dimensions: 84.1 × 152.4 cm (33 1/8 × 60 in.)
- Credit Line: Friends of American Art Collection
- Reference Number: 1942.51
Note from me, Laurence, about the above information.
I absolutely love this painting. I found an excellent webpage that describes it just enough for you to want to get to know the artist, and the painting better – I hope.
What I dread is that when I link to it, that eventually the information will be taken down, so I’ve copy/pasted it here so that you’ll always be able to see some of it.
But this is the origin page: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/111628/nighthawks
Running Down Vimy 