Café Terrace at Night

1888 Find this painting on the map

Cafe Terrace at Night, also known as The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, was rendered in Arles, France in September 1888. The style of the painting is unique for Van Gogh, with the warmth of colours and the depth of the perspective.This is the first painting in which he used starry backgrounds. He continued painting star filled skies in Starry Night Over the Rhone, painted the same month, and the better known Starry Night a year later. Also, in his Portrait of Eugene Boch Van Gogh painted a starlight background.

After finishing Cafe 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 of 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 colours 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.”

Current Location: Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, The Netherlands