Edward Hopper is considered the first significant American painter in twentieth-century art. After decades of patient work, Hopper enjoyed a success and popularity that since the 1950s have continually grown.

Living in a secluded country house with his wife Josephine, he depicted the loneliness of big-city people in canvas after canvas. Many of Hopper’s pictures represent views of streets and roads, rooftops, abandoned houses, depicted in brilliant light that strangely belies the melancholy mood of the scenes. On the other hand, Hopper’s renderings of rocky landscapes in warm brown hues, or his depictions of the sea coast, exude an unusual tranquillity that reveals another, more optimistic side of his character.

Hopper’s paintings are marked by striking juxtapositions of colour, and by the clear contours with which the figures are demarcated from their surroundings. His extremely precise focus on the theme of modern men and women in both the natural and the man-made environment sometimes lends his pictures a mood of eerie disquiet.