Café Terrace at Night, also known as The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, is a coloured oil painting executed by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...

 on an industrially primed canvas of size 25 (Toile de 25 figure) in Arles

Arles

Arles is a city and commune in the south of France, in the Bouches-du-Rhône department, of which it is a subprefecture, in the former province of Provence....

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, mid-September 1888. The painting is not signed, but described and mentioned by the artist in his letters on various occasions. There is also a large pen drawing of the composition which originates from the artist’s estate.

Visitors of the site can still stand at the northeastern corner of the Place du Forum, where the artist set up his easel. He looked south towards the artificially lit terrace of the popular coffee house, as well as into the enforced darkness of the rue du Palais leading up to the building structure (to the left, not pictured) and, beyond this structure, the tower of a former church (now Musée Lapidaire). Towards the right, Van Gogh indicated a lighted shop as well, and some branches of the trees surrounding the place -- but he omitted the remainders of the Roman monuments just beside this little shop.

The painting is currently at the Kröller-Müller Museum

Kröller-Müller Museum

The Kröller-Müller Museum is an art museum and sculpture garden, located in the Hoge Veluwe National Park in Otterlo in the Netherlands.-Museum:...

 in Otterlo

Otterlo

Otterlo is a small village in the province of Gelderland in the Netherlands, in or near the Nationaal Park De Hoge Veluwe....

, Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

.

Genesis

After finishing Café Terrace at Night, Van Gogh wrote a letter to his sister expressing his enthusiasm:

Night effects

When exhibited for the first time, in 1892, the painting was entitled Coffeehouse, in the evening (Café, le soir).

This is the first painting in which he used starry backgrounds; he went on to paint star-filled skies in Starry Night Over the Rhone

Starry Night Over the Rhone

Starry Night Over the Rhone is one of Vincent van Gogh's paintings of Arles at night; it was painted at a spot on the banks of river which was only a minute or two's walk from the Yellow House on the Place Lamartine which Van Gogh was renting at the time...

(painted the same month), and the better known Starry Night a year later. Van Gogh also painted a starlight background in Portrait of Eugene Boch

Portrait of Eugene Boch

Portraits painted by Vincent van Gogh throughout his career from 1881 through 1890.-Portraits of Vincent van Gogh by other artists:Emile Bernard described Van Gogh as having "a sharp glace and a mouth incisively set as if to speak." Aside from consistent intensity to portraits of Van Gogh, his...

. Van Gogh mentioned the Cafe Terrace painting in a letter written to Eugene Boch

Eugène Boch

Eugène Boch was a Belgian painter, born in Saint-Waast, Nord, Hainaut, and the younger brother of Anna Boch, a founding member of Les XX....

on October 2, 1888.

External links

• The Vincent van Gogh Gallery entry about Cafe Terrace at Night.