Edward Hopper was an American realist painter best known for his paintings of mundane urban and rural scenes. Some of his most famous works include Nighthawks (1942), which depicts solitary figures in a late-night diner, conveying a sense of loneliness. Hopper studied under Robert Henri and was influenced by European realism, though he focused on depicting ordinary scenes from middle-class American life during the Depression era. His paintings provided insight into the solitude and isolation of modern life through his precise representations of spaces and emotionally detached treatment of figures.