WASHINGTON, Sept 17, 2007 (AFP) - For the first time in 25 years outside his native New York City, painter Edward Hopper will be the subject of a retrospective at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Hopper (1882-1967) defied classification in his art, which tended toward realism and often focused on the solitary, romantic, soul-searching lives of New Yorkers.

He became known for making "the ordinary extraordinary," said Earl Powell, director of the National Gallery of Art, which opens the show this month.

In all, 96 of his paintings and prints are to be shown from September 16 to January 2008, marking the first time Hopper's art has ever been displayed to such a degree outside New York and the first major exhibit of his works in 25 years.

Among them is the well-known "Nighthawks," which lends a view from a window upon a New York diner late at night, capturing a moonlit moment with one couple, one lone man and an attendant who keeps his hands busy beneath a counter.

Cherished as a poet of realism, both simple and enigmatic at the same time, Hopper was born and raised in New York but never belonged to any particular movement or school of painting.

He debuted as an artist rather late in life, and found huge acclaim when the Museum of Modern Art in New York devoted a retrospective to his life's work in 1933, about 10 years after his first big break with a painting called "The Mansard Roof".

Hopper's widely recognized work is among the most reproduced in the United States and beyond, and often influenced images seen in movies and pop culture.

Hopper, himself an admirer of early film and cinema, inspired filmmakers including Alfred Hitchcock who modeled the house in "Psycho" after a Victorian house featured in one of Hopper's paintings.

The exhibit follows a chronology that aims to highlight themes in his work, including the rural American landscapes of Maine and New England with their isolated houses and the urban yet solitary scenes of city life captured through a window.

From his studio in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, where he lived all his life, Hopper used oils and watercolors to paint the tops of New Yorkers' homes ("Roofs," 1926), the red brick exteriors of buildings ("Early Sunday Morning," 1930) and the chic inside view of hotel rooms "Night Windows," 1928).

Other well-known paintings include a deserted, desolate gas station ("Gas," 1940) and a woman working in a theater, immersed in her thoughts ("New York Movie," 1939).

Hopper was known for his long silences during interviews as he contemplated how to answer queries about his motivation and work, and typically replied: "If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint."

The Washington exhibit concludes with a tableau Hopper completed at the age of 80, four years before his death. The painting, "Sun in an Empty Room," (1963) is of a ray of light illuminating an uncluttered wall.

Asked once by an interviewer what he was after in that painting, Hopper replied: "I'm after me."