Cafe Terrace at Night
Vincent Van Gogh, 1888, Arles
The Café Terrace at Night, also known as The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, is among the most iconic works of Vincent Van Gogh. It depicts a cozy café in the evening on the streets of Arles, France, with the clear night sky above set in the vivid colors of Van Gogh, the painting truly captures the feeling of the moment. The perspective and warmth of the complementary colors used draw viewers into the painting and beyond. Meanwhile, the graphic texture of the cobblestones invites the eye towards the little café itself, with its cozy atmosphere and little white tables, the tables themselves repeating the spheres of Van Gogh’s stars in the mighty dark blue sky. Meanwhile, the awning and walls of the café, with the warm yellow radiance, cut into this sky to enhance the colors and form the main composition of the painting.
A Starry Night
The Café Terrace was the first painting in which Van Gogh used a starry background. He later on painted star filled skies in both Starry Night Over the Rhone, and the Starry Night, painted a year later. When doing The Café Terrace at Night, Van Gogh worked in a flurry, using many of the techniques he also employed in his drawings. The end result is definitely among the most beautiful paintings he made, full of the light and peace he sought for but never quite found for himself
“I have a terrible need of–dare I say–religion…then I go outside at night and paint the stars.”
“I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.”
Location Today
The café at the Center of The Café Terrace at Night still stands in Arles, France, today, and visitors can stand in the place he set up he easel. He was looking south towards the café and into the darkness of rue de Palais beyond. The café itself has been renamed The Van Gogh café after the painting the immortalized it. It has also been remodeled to more completely resemble Van Gogh’s vision on this cool evening in September 1888.
After capturing this beautifully in The Café Terrace at Night, Van Gogh wrote a letter to his sister expressing his enthusiasm:
“ I was only interrupted by my work on a new painting representing the exterior of a night café. On the terrace there are small figures of people drinking. An immense yellow lantern illuminates the terrace, the facade, the side walk and even casts light on the paving stones of the road which take a pinkish violet tone. The gables of the houses, like a fading road below a blue sky studded with stars, are dark blue or violet with a green tree. Here you have a night painting without black, with nothing but beautiful blue and violet and green and in this surrounding the illuminated area colors itself sulfur pale yellow and citron green. It amuses me enormously to paint the night right on the spot. Normally, one draws and paints the painting during the daytime after the sketch. But I like to paint the thing immediately. It is true that in the darkness I can take a blue for a green, a blue lilac for a pink lilac, since it is hard to distinguish the quality of the tone. But it is the only way to get away from our conventional night with poor pale whitish light, while even a simple candle already provides us with the richest of yellows and oranges. ”
Yellows and oranges he indeed employed as he immortalized the warmth of The Café Terrace at Night in Arles.
The original The Café Terrace at Night is currently on display at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands.
Other Featurd Works by Van Gogh
The Starry Night
Vincent Van Gogh, 1889
Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers
Vincent Van Gogh, 1888