The master of the solitary landscape painting is New York artist Edward Hopper. His realist approach to his land and cityscapes that focus on light would influence many contemporary artist that followed him (like Mark Rothko and David Hockney). In his youth, he would help his dad at the family general store and enjoyed drawing. He created numerous self-portraits to improve his skills. After high school, he attended Correspondence School of Illustrating in New York City to study illustration. He transferred to the Chase School of Art in New York under the schools founder William Merritt Chase the following year. Hopper didn’t respect Chase as a teacher, so he sought outside sources to help him improve. For a while in his early career he would work under the advisement of Robert Henri, one of the original American Realists. Under Henri, Hopper learned to dismiss old academic formulas and pave a new path in art; Realism. “[Henri was] the most influential teacher I had.” Hopper would work for the next twenty years in the commercial field as designer or illustrator, working on various posters, advertisements, and illustrations. On a trip to Europe, he was looking at some of the late impressionistic works and was impressed by their use of light. Light almost instantly became a focus of Hopper’s as he created his art.

Even though Hopper was learning a lot about making art and his art skills were improving, he was being rejected by academic juries and art dealers all over. He kept working at it until one sale turned into a sold-out exhibition and he was established at the age of forty-two. Hopper, along with Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton, made American Realism the focus of art around the world. “Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.”

Speaking of the inner life of the artist, it may also be prudent to note Hopper's way of being. He personally pained over every idea and every painting. He was deliberate with every part of a painting. This is the way he was. When he spoke his works were slow and calculated.

Hopper placed so much focus on architectural elements that it is easy to understand when he stated that "all I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house." Those architectural painting influenced other visual media like movies (House by the Railroad inspired the house in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho), however, of all of his over 800 painted land and cityscapes, the one that is most recognized and perhaps the most influential to the art world is Nighthawks. We see the lonely customers sitting in the all-night diner with no door somewhere in the city. The customers in the diner are the nighthawks; predators looking for their prey. We see the amazing details while many things are hidden from our vantage point. This allows us to create the story. That is what gives Nighthawks its power. “Unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city." It is uniqie that Hopper lived in urban areas, however, he rejected the Perisian and New York styles that were popular during his life. For the painting, Hopper used himself as the model for the two seated men and his wife as the woman. Like most of his work, the scene is ordinary. But he take the ordinary and creates a extraordinary image through presentation, lighting to add drama, the hint of a memory from our past, and amazing skill. “If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.”