Nighthawks was meant to be about ‘predators in the night’, not loneliness.
Described as a midcentury masterpiece, Nighthawks is an iconic oil painting that helped define American Realism and the Modernist movement. Painted by Edward Hopper in 1942, it portrays three customers in a late-night New York City diner, as viewed through a large glass window. The light coming from the diner illuminates a dark and deserted nocturne landscape.
Nighthawks is one of the most recognizable paintings in American art. Hopper's best-known work, it took him about a month and a half to complete. It was sold to the Art Institute of Chicago on May 13, 1942, for $3,000 (over $43,000 today).
Edward Hopper, Nighthawks. 1942. Oil on canvas. 33 1/8 in. × 60 in.
Hopper’s darker theme
Though Hopper is best known for capturing urban isolation and loneliness, this was not the intent behind Nighthawks, according to the artist. Hopper said, Nighthawks, “has more to do with the possibility of predators in the night than with loneliness.” Hopper may have been inspired by an Ernest Hemmingway short story—either “The Killers”, which Hopper greatly admired, or from the more philosophical “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”.
“Nighthawks has more to do with the possibility of predators in the night than with loneliness.”
This is a fascinating statement, since the subject of much of Hopper’s work revolves around urban alienation and loneliness. For example, Automat, a much earlier Hopper work painted in 1927, is the epitome of loneliness. The prospect of Nighthawks being about ‘predators in the night’ is an intriguing underlying theme.
Edward Hopper - Automat, 1927. Oil on canvas.
Hopper said that Nighthawks was inspired by “a restaurant on New York's Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet” near Hopper's Washington Square neighborhood in Manhattan. Additionally, he noted that "I simplified the scene a great deal and made the restaurant bigger".
Edward Hopper - Early pencil sketch for Nighthawks.
Hopper wrote, “It is, I believe, one of the very best things I have painted. I seem to have come nearer to saying what I want to say in my work, this past winter, than I ever have before.”
The image is a carefully constructed composition. Hopper started his career as an illustrator, so it’s clear to see why his paintings have a strong graphic sensibility. His work is realistic, but simplified. Though the building that inspired him no longer exists, the timeless quality of the diner that he depicted has become an enduring part of classic Americana.
“In general it can be said that a nation’s art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people. ”
Edward Hopper - Later charcoal sketch for Nighthawks.
Edward Hopper was born 1882 in Nyack, New York. As a boy, Edward Hopper knew exactly what he wanted to be when he grew up—On the cover of his pencil box, he wrote the words EDWARD HOPPER, WOULD-BE ARTIST. After graduating from high school, he studied briefly at the Correspondence School of Illustrating in New York. He trained with Robert Henri at the New York School of Art. Hopper worked primarily as a commercial illustrator for the first half of his life. Though a talented illustrator, he hated the advertising world. Hopper did not achieve his first artistic success until he was forty-three. No one wanted to buy his paintings early on, yet he never gave up on becoming a fine artist. With his shift from illustration to fine arts, he studied with William Chase, a leading American Impressionist painter. He was obsessed with painting light, and his works explore this obsession throughout his entire career.
The background in Nighthawks closely resembles another Hopper work, Early Sunday Morning.
Edward Hopper and his wife Josephine, ‘Jo’ kept a journal in which he would make a sketch of each of his paintings, along with a precise description of certain technical details. Jo Hopper would then add additional information about the theme of the painting.
According to Jo’s journal, Nighthawks was completed on January 21st, 1942 in New York, less than 7 weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. For that reason, the work can be seen as an expression of wartime alienation. In those turbulent times when everyone was paranoid about another attack, and while New York held blackout drills on an ongoing basis, Hopper's studio lights at 1 Washington Square stayed on. Hopper didn’t care. In her diary, Jo wrote:
“Ed refuses to take any interest in the very likely prospect of being bombed.”
This was the atmosphere in which Nighthawks was created. There were new and ominous predators on the world stage in 1942. The future was very uncertain—as uncertain as the darkness surrounding the characters in this painting. And yet, the light of the Nighthawks diner is an island of warmth and safety—a ‘clean, well-lighted place’. That could be a more optimistic view of this painting. What is there to do in a time of darkness and doubt, but to keep living, and working? Congregate in the light, and be alone, together. A message for contemporary times.
Hopper posed in a mirror to sketch out 2 of the men in Nighthawks. The red-haired woman was actually modeled by the artist’s wife, Jo—the only woman she allowed as Hopper’s model.
A closer look at the journal page on which Nighthawks is entered shows (in Edward's handwriting) that the intended name of the work was actually Night Hawks (two words).
Jo's handwritten notes give considerably more detail, including the possibility that the painting's title may have had its origins as a reference to the beak-shaped nose of the man at the bar, or that the appearance of one of the "nighthawks" was tweaked in order to relate to the original meaning of the word.
In January 1942, Jo confirmed her preference for the name. In a letter to Edward's sister Marion, she wrote, "Ed has just finished a very fine picture—a lunch counter at night with 3 figures. Night Hawks would be a fine name for it. E. posed for the two men in a mirror and I for the girl.”
While Hopper denied that the implied meaning of this or any other of his paintings were of human isolation and urban emptiness, he acknowledged that “unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city”. Yet ultimately, Hopper leaves the narrative and understanding of his work to the viewer, stating, “If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.”
Hopper believed that, “In general it can be said that a nation's art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people.” The subjects in Nighthawks seem to represent the character of 1940s America, romanticized or not.
Nighthawks on display in Gallery 262, Art Institute of Chicago.
The painting also evokes a sense of nostalgia for an America of days gone by. However, Nighthawks is more than just a masterful painting. It remains relevant even today as a subtle critique of the modern world, and a portal into a darker side of the American psyche.
Nighthawks may be seen at the Art Institute of Chicago, in Gallery 262. Along with Grant Wood’s American Gothic, it remains the most requested and sought-after painting in their collection, and one of the most recognizable paintings of 20th-century American art.