Café Terrace at Night

Café Terrace at Night was painted by Vincent van Gogh in Arles in mid-September 1888, during a period when he was absorbed by the light and life of southern France. The scene shows the brightly lit terrace of a café on the Place du Forum, with tables and chairs set out beneath the façade, a few tiny figures of drinkers, and a cobbled street receding into darkness. What stands out is that the night is not a heavy black backdrop; instead it is built from blues, violets and greens, while the yellow of the lanterns and windows gathers the light and gives the scene a warm, convivial feel. Van Gogh worked outdoors at night, an unusual method at the time, and in a letter to his sister he described his enthusiasm for painting a night without black. It is also the first of his works to use a starry background, an idea he would soon develop in Starry Night Over the Rhône and The Starry Night. Some scholars have read the composition as a symbolic reworking of the Last Supper, but this interpretation remains debated rather than settled. The painting is also known as The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, and when first shown in 1891 it bore the title Coffeehouse, in the evening. Today it hangs in the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands, where it remains one of the clearest examples of his search for colour in darkness.

Painter

Vincent van Gogh

Date

1888

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

81 × 65 cm

Museum

Kröller-Müller Museum, Ede

Movement

Post-impressionism

Genre

cityscape

Depicts

tree, lamp, table, chair, gas burner, platform, café, La Cité

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