Vasari | Café Terrace at Night

Van Gogh painted Café Terrace at Night in Arles during 9-16th September 1888, recording his new impressions of the town in southern France. This work shows a café located in the district of La Cité in Arles; the name of the café was “La Terrasse” back then

Van Gogh wrote to his sister Wilhelmina: “…… a new painting representing the exterior of a café in the night. On the terrace there are some small figures of drinkers. An immense yellow lantern illuminates the terrace, the façade of the café, the sidewalk, and projects even a light on the pebble-paved alley which takes on a taint of violet-pink. The garbled roofs of the houses, aligned under the blue sky sprinkled with stars, are deep blue or violet. This is a painting of the night without the colour black! …… All the colours give me enormous amusement to paint the night on the scene. Before, we used to sketch first then do the painting on the next day. But I find it good to paint the thing immediately. It is true that in the obscurity I can take a blue for a green, a lilac blue for a lilac pink, because one cannot well distinguish the quality of the tone. But this is the only way to get out of the convention of painting the night in black …… while perhaps a simple candle can already give the richest colours of yellow and orange”

The style of this painting is unique for Van Gogh with warm colours and well-defined perspective. It is the first time when he painted a starred night sky, which will re-appear later in Starry Night over the Rhône, created in the same month, and Starry Night, a more famous work executed one year later