Nighthawks, 1942 Edward Hopper (1882-1967)

We create our paintings with museum quality and covering the highest academic standards. Once we get your order, it will be entirely hand-painted with oil on canvas. All the materials we use are the highest level, being totally artist graded painting materials and linen canvas.

We will add 1.6" (4 cm) additional blank canvas all over the painting for stretching.

High quality and detailing in every inch are time consuming. The reproduction of Edward Hopper also needs time to dry in order to be completely ready for shipping, as this is crucial to not be damaged during transportation.
Based on the size, level of detail and complexity we need 8-9 weeks to complete the process.

In case the delivery date needs to be extended in time, or we are overloaded with requests, there will be an email sent to you sharing the new timelines of production and delivery.

TOPofART wants to remind you to keep patient, in order to get you the highest quality, being our mission to fulfill your expectations.

We not stretch and frame our oil paintings due to several reasons:
Painting reproduction is a high quality expensive product, which we cannot risk to damage by sending it being stretched.
Also, there are postal restrictions, regarding the size of the shipment.
Additionally, due to the dimensions of the stretched canvas, the shipment price may exceed the price of the product itself.

You can stretch and frame your painting in your local frame-shop.

Once the painting Nighthawks is ready and dry, it will be shipped to your delivery address. The canvas will be rolled-up in a secure postal tube.

We offer free shipping as well as paid express transportation services.

After adding your artwork to the shopping cart, you will be able to check the delivery price using the Estimate Shipping and Tax tool.

The paintings we create are only of museum quality. Our academy graduated artists will never allow a compromise in the quality and detail of the ordered painting. TOPofART do not work, and will never allow ourselves to work with low quality studios from the Far East. We are based in Europe, and quality is our highest priority.

The vast plate‑glass façade presents a stage‑like interior, luminous against the nocturnal hush of an empty street. Inside, three patrons and a white‑jacketed attendant are arranged along a polished mahogany counter that runs the diagonal breadth of the composition. Their hats, cigarettes, and coffee cups suggest transience, yet the figures appear anchored by private reveries. Outside, angular shopfronts recede into shadow; no doorway invites entry, and the viewer hovers, as if illicitly, at the threshold of this hermetic scene.

A limited, deliberately modulated palette heightens the work’s psychological charge. The neon‑tinted yellows that bathe the diner generate a membrane of warmth, isolating it from the deep teal and Prussian blues of the pavement and façades beyond. A single crimson note—the woman’s dress—echoes faintly in the burnished counter top, sparingly animating an otherwise muted register of ochres and greens. Such tonal orchestration does more than describe light: it circumscribes mood, conjuring both solace and estrangement in the same breath.

Hopper’s handling is characteristically economical. Brushwork is discreet, almost self‑effacing; surfaces are built through thin, opaque layers that leave no visible impasto. The glass window is rendered by omission, its presence inferred through the distortion of reflected light and the crisp linearity of the muntins. Even the figures are distilled to essentials: a hat brim, a bent elbow, a sweep of blonde hair create instant legibility without expressive flourish.

Compositionally, the painting is a study in containment. The sweeping counter bisects the diner, establishing a serpentine axis that guides the eye from the solitary man’s bowed back to the silent couple, before settling on the attendant’s attentive lean. The bounding rectangle of the window, echoed by doorways and transoms, frames the tableau within nested geometries, while the oblique viewpoint denies spatial reciprocity; we can look, but cannot cross.

Completed in 1942, at a moment when wartime uncertainty permeated urban life, the picture channels an atmosphere of watchful suspension. Hopper’s realist vocabulary—shaped by Ashcan precedents yet tempered by cinematic modernity—imbues the ordinary with contemplative gravity. The artist later spoke of “painting the loneliness of a large city,” yet the scene transcends sociology. It crystallises a paradox: the poignant solitude that persists even in shared spaces, rendered with a clarity so poised that time itself seems to pause.