Bio: An influential American painter best known for his street and interior scenes such as
Nigh Hawks. Edward Hopper was a student of illustration at the New York School of Art with Robert Henri (1900-1906). In 1906 he traveled extensively in Europe, although he spent most of his time in Paris. In 1908 he returned to New York as a commercial artist and held his first exhibition at the Harmonie Club.
He quickly won widespread recognition as a central figure of American Scene painting, often depicting the loneliness of American city life.
Hopper was a very private man. Married to the artist Josephine Verstille Nivison who died within a year of Hopper's death in 1967.
Hopper's widow bequeathed his entire artistic estate to the Whitney Museum. Consisting of more than 2,500 oils, watercolors, drawings, and prints dating from Hopper's student days to his later years, as well as his illustrated journals, this is the largest single gift of art work in the history of the Museum