Nighthawks is a 1942 oil on canvas painting by Edward Hopper that portrays people in a downtown diner late at night as viewed through the diner's large glass window. The light coming from the diner illuminates a darkened and deserted urban streetscape.

It has been described as Hopper's best-known work and is one of the most recognizable paintings in American art. Within months of its completion, it was sold to the Art Institute of Chicago on May 13, 1942, for $3,000 .

It has been suggested that Hopper was inspired by a short story of Ernest Hemingway's, either "The Killers", which Hopper greatly admired, or from the more philosophical "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place". In response to a query on loneliness and emptiness in the painting, Hopper outlined that he "didn't see it as particularly lonely". He said "unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city"