Edward Hopper: City

Edward Hopper lived in New York's Greenwich Village neighborhood for most of his professional career. The City infused his art. Here are some of his most popular New York City paintings:

• Approaching a City
  1946 oil on canvas. In the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

• Chop Suey
  1929 oil on canvas. In the collection of Barney A. Ebsworth.

• Drug Store
  1927 oil on canvas, donated by John T. Spaulding to Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The museum writes: "Among the first of Hopper's paintings to illustrate what became a favorite theme, Drug Store depicts nocturnal solitude in the city. Eerily illuminated by electric light, the drug store window (probably located near Hopper's studio in New York's Greenwich Village) is a bright spot in a picture otherwise made up of shadowy doorways and blank facades."

• New York Movie
  1939 oil on canvas. In the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

• Nighthawks
  1942 oil on canvas. Purchased with the help of the Friends of American Art Collection for the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois. The museum writes: "The anonymous and uncommunicative night owls seem as remote from the viewer as they are from one another. Although Hopper denied that he purposely infused any of his paintings with symbols of isolation and emptiness, he acknowledged of Nighthawks that, 'unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city.'"

• Room in Brooklyn
  1932 oil on canvas. In the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts.

• Room in New York
  1932 oil on canvas. In the F. M. Hall Collection of the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Nebraska.

See below for more about Edward Hopper's life and work. To view larger images of Hopper's city paintings click on the thumbnail image below. These city prints are for sale from AllPosters, one of the largest and most reputable online poster stores. They have a great selection, good customer service, and you can't usually find lower prices. (But if you have time and prefer to shop around, you can click here to compare poster stores.)

Approaching a City Edward Hopper 29 in. x 23 in. Buy Approaching a City	Approaching a city, 1946 Edward Hopper 40 in. x 28 in. Buy Approaching a city, 1946	Room in Brooklyn Edward Hopper 32 in. x 24 in. Buy Room in Brooklyn	New York Movie Edward Hopper 32 in. x 24 in. Buy New York Movie
Nighthawks, 1942 Edward Hopper 47 in. x 36 in. Buy Nighthawks, 1942	Nighthawks, 1942 Edward Hopper 32 in. x 24 in. Buy Nighthawks, 1942	Nighthawks Edward Hopper 36 in. x 24 in. Buy Nighthawks	Nighthawks, 1942 Edward Hopper 16 in. x 12 in. Buy Nighthawks, 1942
Chop Suey Edward Hopper 14 in. x 11 in. Buy Chop Suey	Chop Suey Edward Hopper 32 in. x 24 in. Buy Chop Suey	Chop Suey Edward Hopper 10 in. x 8 in. Buy Chop Suey	New York Restaurant Edward Hopper 16 in. x 12 in. Buy New York Restaurant
Room in New York Edward Hopper 14 in. x 11 in. Buy Room in New York	Room in New York Edward Hopper 16 in. x 12 in. Buy Room in New York	August in the City Edward Hopper 29 in. x 23 in. Buy August in the City	New York Office Edward Hopper 30 in. x 24 in. Buy New York Office

Robert Hughes, the author of American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America, has written that "Edward Hopper was the quintessential realist painter of twentieth-century America." The American public agrees with the art experts when it comes to Hopper. His work is extremely popular.

Edward Hopper did not achieve artistic acclaim easily. He was born in Nyack, New York, in 1882. He studied at the New York School of Illustrating, and later at the more prestigious New York School of Art. Here he studied under American realist Robert Henri. After his studies at the NY School of Art, Edward Hopper went to Europe to study in Paris. This was 1906, at a key time in the development of modern art.

Hopper struggled for years. He paid the bills working as a commercial illustrator. His first creative success as a painter came in 1924 when he sold out a show at the Rehn Gallery in New York. This is the year he painted The House by the Railroad. He went on to create many other well-known works of art, including: The Bootleggers (1925), Drug Store (1927), Lighthouse Hill (1927), Chop Suey (1929), Coast Guard Station (1929), Lighthouse at Two Lights (1929), Room in Brooklyn (1932), Room in New York (1932), The Long Leg (1935), Yawl Riding a Swell (1935), Ground Swell (1939), New York Movie (1939), Gas (1940), Route 6 Eastham (1941), Nighthawks (1942), Martha McKeen of Wellfleet (1944), Approaching a City (1946), High Noon (1949), Seven A.M. (1949), Cape Cod Morning (1950), Rooms by the Sea (1951), Carolina Morning (1955), People in the Sun (1960), Second Story Sunlight (1960).

In the same year that his career first took off, 1924, Edward Hopper married Josephine Verstille Nivison. "Jo" modeled for many of Edward's paintings in the following years.

In 1967, Edward Hopper passed away, leaving us a wonderful legacy of fine art. His subject matter ranges from diners and restaurants, to rooms and houses, to women and other people. He painted cityscapes in New York, and many roads, lighthouses, sailboats, and other images of the sea from his summers in New England.

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