Early Sunday Morning

American artist Edward Hopper painted this quiet New York streetscape in 1930, showing a row of storefronts on Seventh Avenue bathed in low morning sunlight. The sharp horizontal of the building facade stretches across the canvas. Every window blind is drawn. A barber pole and fire hydrant are the only vertical interruptions. Nobody is visible.

Hopper originally included a figure in an upper window but painted it out, deciding the emptiness was more powerful. The result captures something specific about American cities: that eerie stillness before a neighborhood wakes up. The long shadows and warm brick tones suggest summer. It's early. The street belongs to the light.

The painting hangs at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, where Hopper's work forms a cornerstone of the collection. His wife Jo donated over 3,000 of his works to the Whitney after his death in 1967.