Nighthawks

The story of Nighthawks

Late at night on an empty corner, a diner glows like an aquarium. Inside are a couple who are not quite together, a man with his back to you, and a counterman in white bending to his work. There is no door. Hopper painted it in 1942, a few weeks after Pearl Harbor, working from a corner in Greenwich Village that he never named, and the Art Institute of Chicago bought it within months. It is the most quoted painting in American culture because it shows something everyone has felt: being awake and alone in a place built for company.

This is a painting for a dark room. The dominant colors are the acid green and yellow of the fluorescent light, the deep teal-black of the street, and a few notes of red in the woman's dress and the brick. It suits a home bar, a den, a media room, a kitchen with dark cabinets, or an office, and it fits mid-century, industrial, and city-loft interiors. The composition is wide and low, like a movie frame, so it wants a long wall. The Large at 43.9 × 24 in is the size that makes the window feel real, and the Extra Large at 65.9 × 36 in will turn it into the whole room. The Medium at 29.3 × 16 in fits above a counter or a desk.

Hopper's Automat is the same loneliness from the woman's side of the glass, Early Sunday Morning is the same street at dawn, and Gas is the same light on a country road. More from Edward Hopper.

We print from the Art Institute of Chicago's open-access photograph of the canvas, in our own studio, holding the greens and the darks where Hopper set them.