Edward Hopper painted solitude. His diners, hotel rooms, gas stations, and movie theaters are populated by people who seem profoundly alone even when others are present. Nighthawks — four figures in a late-night diner — became the most recognized image of American urban isolation, and Hopper’s ability to paint emotional states through architecture, light, and empty space made him the visual poet of a country that was rich in everything except connection.

This episode traces Hopper from his Nyack childhood through the decades of commercial illustration that preceded his fine art career, the paintings that defined American loneliness, and the difficult marriage to fellow artist Jo Hopper that was its own kind of isolation.

• Hopper’s years as a struggling illustrator and the late breakthrough that came in his forties
• Nighthawks, Automat, and the paintings that turned loneliness into America’s defining visual mood
• His technique — using architecture, light, and negative space to paint emotional states
• The volatile marriage to Jo Hopper and the mutual isolation that may have fed his art