Edward Hopper painted Nighthawks (originally titled Night Hawks) in 1942. Hopper posed as the two suited men and his wife Josephine posed for the woman. Look at enough Hoppers you’ll notice the women all look familiar; they are all Josephine. Part of the enduring interest in Nighthawks has been the hunt for the diner that inspired it, alas never found but the clue being in a statement by Hopper that the diner was “suggested by a restaurant in Greenwich Avenue” and that he “simplified the scene a great deal”. In preparatory sketches made by Hopper displayed at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s exhibition of Hopper Drawing they showed a deliberately composed scene that evolved into the final composition, look at the building in the background and it looks very similar to the building in Early Sunday Morning (1930). An expert composition of real and inspired elements and a masterpiece was born.
I think the fact it isn’t quite real but seems like it should be is part of its appeal. That and the name, Night Hawks. In a note written by Josephine about the painting the man facing us at the bar with the cigarette is described “Man night hawk (beak)”, he does indeed have a beaky sort of nose. Nighthawks are what I’d call Night owls, a term for those out late at night after everyone else had gone home, which is the other reason for the paintings appeal, it looks like a film still and the viewer fills in the story.
Who are they and where are they going? The couple appear comfortable and relaxed, it’s mostly the third customer whose face we can’t see sitting apart from the three that gives tension to the painting, but this could simply be to balance the composition. The only action or movement comes from the barman, everything and everyone else is still. Had it been a daytime scene it wouldn’t have had the same tension, there’s something about the lateness of the hour, the cool dark shadows and empty streets that throw focus onto the stark interior and those within it. With no door into the diner the viewer is kept at a distance. There is also a fifth character, unseen, the spectator outside looking in, we become that unseen creature and become another nighthawk.
Hopper paints New York a city of millions but in his works this vast metropolis appears empty apart from the protagonist, the epitome of being lonely in a crowd. His works give an out of hours sense of solitude, have the people yet to arrive or have they all gone home? Or is it an alterative mysterious parallel version of the city of perpetual dark emptiness rather like The Upside Down in Stranger Things? Who knows, it doesn’t really matter. All I know is that Nighthawks is moody, strange, quiet, alluring and one of my favourite paintings that I never tire of looking at.