Feature image: Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942. Oil on canvas, 33 1/8 × 60 in. (84.1 x 152.4 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois. Purchased using Friends of American Art fund, 1942.51. Photo: The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource, NY/Scala, Florence. © 2026 Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY/DACS, London.

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Edward Hopper had certainly started Nighthawks, his iconic vision of a sparsely populated New York diner aglow with artificial light, by late November 1941. When Arnold Newman photographed him in front of the empty canvas that month, Hopper had clearly decided the picture’s dimensions; he had also probably completed many of the nineteen preparatory sketches in both pencil and chalk, several of which featured numeric notes detailing how to scale up the composition to its final form.

As winter set in, Hopper made numerous excursions, trekking up to the Dixie Kitchen diner in Midtown to sketch the coffee urns, as well…