Nighthawks

A diner glows at night behind a curved glass window, its fluorescent light spilling onto an empty street outside. Inside, five figures sit or stand along the counter, bathed in warm yellows and reds that push against the cool greens and dark shadows of the city beyond the glass. The painting was made in 1942 in oil on canvas, and it is held at the Art Institute of Chicago, having come into the collection through the Friends of American Art Collection. Edward Hopper (1882–1967), an American painter associated with American realism, also painted Early Sunday Morning. One detail worth noticing is how the harsh interior light isolates the customers from one another even as it binds them together in the same small, illuminated space, while the darkened storefronts across the street seem to recede into near silence.