Originality is neither a matter of inventiveness nor method, it is the essence of personality. - Edward Hopper

The whole answer is there on the canvas.

I was always interested in architecture, but the editors [of the magazines who demanded these subjects for the illustrations of Hopper] wanted people waving with their arms.

Sloan [American colleague artist who started his art by making etchings, c. 1920] not having been abroad [in contrary to Hopper himself], has seen these things with a truer and fresher eye than most..The hard early training has given to Sloan a facility and a power of invention that the pure painter seldom achieves.