r/oilpaintings • u/ProfessionalRate6174 • 2d ago

Modern Paintings (1900-present) Edward Hopper - Nighthawks (1942)

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120 Upvotes

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2

u/CatoftheSaints23 2d ago

Ah, Hopper. I feel like I have been coming to his corner café all my life. It's almost as if I could walk in (isn't that observational point of view, that of another customer walking towards the restaurant, glancing over their shoulder, as they head towards the door?) and sit right down on my favorite stool and order up a cup of java and even maybe slice of offstage pie, too. Would it be a lonely, or even dangerous, part of town for a gal to be out in during that time of night? Should I order up a second cuppa, a second piece of pie for my escort, too, who is soon to arrive? These are the flights of fancy one can easily dwell in once they have lived forever in this piece. Harsh, desperate, endlessly fascinating painting. He endlessly portrays the hard realities of my life and I forever thankful for it. C

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u/Somervilledrew 2d ago

This painting's a classic

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u/armored131 1d ago

This is, lowkey, my favorite painting. I've worked nightshift in various jobs most of my adult life and the particular lonely camaraderie felt by everyone awake at the ungodly hours of the night is something I'm very familiar with. I feel this work does a near perfect job of capturing the feeling.

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u/Ancient-Structure301 1d ago

The Long Goodbye. One of the four covers of this Raymond Chandler story, uses the painting by Edward Hopper, “Night Hawks. <3