Café Terrace at Night (Cafe Terrace, Place du Forum, Arles)

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Café Terrace at Night (Cafe Terrace, Place du Forum, Arles): Vincent van Gogh

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Vincent van Gogh Oil Painting - Café Terrace at Night (Cafe Terrace, Place du Forum, Arles)

Keywords: Café, Terrace, Night, Cafe, Terrace, Forum, Arles

Work Overview: Café Terrace at Night (Cafe Terrace, Place du Forum, Arles)
Vincent van Gogh
Date: 1888; Arles, Bouches-du-Rhône, France *
Style: Post-Impressionism
Genre: cityscape
Media: oil, canvas
Dimensions: 80.7 cm × 65.3 cm (31.8 in × 25.7 in)
Location: Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Café Terrace at Night, also known as The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, is an oil painting executed by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh while at Arles, France, in mid-September 1888. The painting is not signed, but described and mentioned by the artist in three letters.

Visitors to the site can still stand at the northeastern corner of the Place du Forum, where the artist set up his easel.[2] 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 in Otterlo, Netherlands.

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

I was interrupted precisely by the work that a new painting of the outside of a café in the evening has been giving me these past few days. On the terrace, there are little figures of people drinking. A huge yellow lantern lights the terrace, the façade, the pavement, and even projects light over the cobblestones of the street, which takes on a violet-pink tinge. The gables of the houses on a street that leads away under the blue sky studded with stars are dark blue or violet, with a green tree. Now there’s a painting of night without black. With nothing but beautiful blue, violet and green, and in these surroundings the lighted square is coloured pale sulphur, lemon green. I enormously enjoy painting on the spot at night. In the past they used to draw, and paint the picture from the drawing in the daytime. But I find that it suits me to paint the thing straightaway. It’s quite true that I may take a blue for a green in the dark, a blue lilac for a pink lilac, since you can’t make out the nature of the tone clearly. But it’s the only way of getting away from the conventional black night with a poor, pallid and whitish light, while in fact a mere candle by itself gives us the richest yellows and oranges.[3]

He continues, in this same letter,

You never told me if you had read Guy de Maupassant’s Bel-ami, and what you now think of his talent in general. I say this because the beginning of Bel-ami is precisely the description of a starry night in Paris, with the lighted cafés of the boulevard, and it’s something like the same subject that I’ve painted just now.[3]

The café terrace, now 'Le Café La Nuit', at Place du Forum, Arles, July 2016
This excerpt forms the basis of the Van Gogh Museum's curators' opinion that the painting is a depiction "of drinkers in the harsh, bright lights of their illuminated facades" from Maupassant's novel Bel Ami, however, they also note that Maupassant makes no mention of a 'starry sky.'[3] In 1981, Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov argued that since it "displays not only a night scene but also a funnel-like perspective and dominant blue-yellow tonality" it was at least partially inspired by Louis Anquetin's Avenue de Clichy: 5 o'clock in the evening.[4]

An academic paper presented at IAFOR's 2013 European Conference on Arts & Humanities, however, advanced the theory that van Gogh intended the painting to be a uniquely innovated Last Supper. The paper was subsequently published by The Art Histories Society in the January, 2014 Art History Supplement[5] and the July, 2014 fourteenth volume of The Anistoriton Journal of History, Archaeology and Art History.[6]

Briefly, the paper examines the myriad artistic influences van Gogh was parsing the summer of 1888: his lifelong devotion to and imitation of Jesus Christ; synthesizing Japonism and Cloisonnism with his own plein air techniques; colorizing Jean-François Millet's pious genre scenes with Eugène Delacroix's luminous palette (see Boats du Rhône); "search-for-sacred-realism" correspondence with his artist friend Émile Bernard; Thomas Carlyle and Boccaccio's examples of dressing old ideas in new clothes; an Émile Burnouf article claiming Buddhist missionaries sowed the seeds Essenes later reaped as Christianity; failed attempts creating his own Christ in the Garden of Olives; two proximal Last Supper studies (Interior of a Restaurant in Arles and Interior of the Restaurant Carrel in Arles) featuring straw-bottomed chairs he'd just purchased by the dozen (hoping to start a commune of twelve "artist-apostles" at his Yellow House); culminating with his composition of twelve diners drenched in a yellow halo surrounding a Rembrandtesque server framed by a crucifix at the vanishing point of the picture; it's concluded his original starry night is a Symbolist's Last Supper.

Although van Gogh never explicitly mentioned his intent in any existing letter, he did write his brother Theo two weeks later, "That doesn't stop me having a terrible need for - dare I say the word - for religion. So I go outside at night to paint the stars and I always dream a painting like that with a group of living figures of the pals."

When exhibited for the first time, in 1891, 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 Rhône (painted the same month), and the better known The Starry Night a year later. Van Gogh also painted a starlight background in Portrait of Eugène Boch. Van Gogh mentioned the Cafe Terrace painting in a letter written to Eugène Boch on October 2, 1888, writing he had painted "a view of the café on place du Forum, where we used to go, painted at night" (emphasis van Gogh's).

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Van Gogh had intended to make a nocturnal painting for some time. And not one in the conventional manner, in shades of black and grey, but actually with an abundance of colours. Equally unconventional is that he paints this gas-lit terrace of a café in Arles in situ and in the dark, because colours have a different appearance during the day than by night.

The most eye-catching aspect is the sharp contrast between the warm yellow, green and orange colours under the marquise and the deep blue of the starry sky, which is reinforced by the dark blue of the houses in the background. Van Gogh was pleased with the effect: ‘I believe that an abundance of gaslight, which, after all, is yellow and orange, intensifies blue.’

He writes to his sister Wil: ‘I enormously enjoy painting on the spot at night.’ The fact that he observes keenly is borne out by later astronomical research. He painted the constellations precisely as they appeared on the night of 16 or 17 September 1888.

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This piece was created by Vincent Van Gogh in Arles, France and was completed sometime in September of 1888. This painting is oil on canvas, and it is currently housed in the Kroller-Muller Museum located in Otterlo, The Netherlands in Europe. This painting depicts a sidewalk cafe in France at night. There is a doorway to the front left of the painting that is painted blue, and is surrounded by a wall that gleams yellow from the outdoor lights.

Attached to the wall, there is a large awning, and it covers the diners and the empty tables that are a part of the cafe. Above the awning, there are open window shutters that are painted green. A server dressed in black and white and holding a tray walks between the customers, which are all gathered to the rear of the restaurant, and there are six tables filled with diners dressed in ordinary dark clothes. There are eight empty tables taking residence in the painting, and they are placed towards the front of the painting, and also to the right of the diners. Next to and behind the cafe, there are people walking through the night streets.

The pedestrians are dressed in brighter colors and more elaborate clothes than those that are seated. There is a street next to the restaurant that appears to be made of cobblestones, and the street winds around the restaurant to the rear of the painting and towards a dark town in the background. On the far right of the painting and opposite of the people eating, there are buildings lining the street. There are seventeen lit windows in various buildings on the street side. The building that is directly across from the cafe also appears to be a business, and the windows are wider that the buildings behind them.

In the very front of the painting, a tree is visible, and the leaves are still green. Above
everything in the painting, there is a blue sky and large bright stars that shine yellow. The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, At Night is painted using oil paints on canvas. When Van Gogh painted this piece, he was most likely on site, and used tubes of paint. Van Gogh had a very particular method of creating new pieces of art, first drawing preliminary drawings and often writing about his new works to his brother, Theo.

After completing one or more preliminary drawings, Van Gogh would gather his canvas, tubes of paint, and brushes, and would take pleasure in going outside to paint his objects firsthand. Van Gogh had a unique method of painting involving brushstrokes; he made large thick strokes, and sometimes forwent using any brushes at all, choosing to paint from a tube directly onto the canvas. Van Gogh used many elements of art elements in his works. The first element that is obvious in The Cafe Terrace is the element of line. The cobblestone street in the work illustrates line use, because they are framed with short, black lines.

These small lines also add an element of texture to the painting. Another instance of line is evident in the buildings in the painting. The windows, doors, and other elements of the houses and businesses are defined more obviously because of the inclusion of black lines. The doorway edge at the front left of the painting is a line that leads the viewer’s eye to the awning. The line of the edge of the awning is another example of line, because it draws the eye down to the street, and the street draws you back to the cafe and the town behind it.
Another example of an art element found in The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, At Night is the element of space. There is a lot of space between the cafe and the buildings across the street, and the space is broken only by the nighttime pedestrians roaming the streets. Space is also represented by the crowd of diners that is gathered at the back of the restaurant. The crowd, along with the server, is crowded together and mirrors the empty space of the front of the cafe perfectly. The next art element that is evidence in the piece is the element of color.

Color is highly evident in this painting, and helps to draw the viewer’s eye to certain places in the painting. The cafe is yellow, and adds a boisterous feeling to that section of the piece. The yellow light spills onto the street and walls of the town, creating bright colors and drawing the eye. The sky and town use dark colors to illustrate nighttime, although the bright spots of the stars cause the viewer to look to the sky. The next art element that is demonstrated in this painting is time and motion. The think strokes of the leaves on the tree make it looks as though a wind is blowing through the streets of France.

The pedestrians in the street demonstrate an element of time and motion because they appear to have been caught mid-stride on the way to their destinations. The server in the cafe, as well as his customers, show motion because they are moving and having conversations amongst themselves. Texture and pattern are very easy to identify in this painting. The street’s cobblestones show texture and pattern in the way that they are arranged. Texture is also demonstrated through the paint strokes on the buildings, the tree, and even the sky. These thick, uneven strokes add a layer of depth and texture to all elements of the painting.

The final element in The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, At Night that demonstrates time is the stars and darkness that represent nighttime. The deep colors in the background, compared with the bright lights under the awning depict the time of day for the viewer. Besides many art elements, the painting also shows lots of art principles. The first principle that can be found is balance. This painting has asymmetrical balance, because the cafe and the empty space balance each other out. Another principle that is easily found in the work is the focal point.

The awning draws the viewer’s eye to the focal point, or center of the painting; the cafe customers. The bright light under the awning emphasizes the focal point of the cafe as well. The next principle that can be found in The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, At Night is scale and proportion. The proportion of the front tables compared to the back tables is different, which shows depth and scale. The proportion and size of the pedestrians compared to the other elements at the front of the painting show the scale of how far back the people and cafe customers might be sitting.

Repetition and rhythm are both important principles that are present in The Cafe Terrace. The repetition of the cobblestones makes the viewer’s eye follow the street around the cafe and toward the people walking the streets. This painting demonstrates rhythm also, because of the obvious differences between the light and dark sections of the painting. Although the darkness sets a slower rhythm for the painting, the contrast of the light adds an element of excitement and life to the piece. The last art principle that can be found in the painting is unity and variety.

These principles are evident in both the unity of the buildings and people, as well as in the variety between the looks of the people in the painting. The buildings create a sense of unity because they are all basically the same form and color, and they seem to go uniformly together. The people and colors both represent the variety in the painting, because of the vast differences between the bright color variety, as well as between the people’s appearances and clothing. When painting The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, At Night, Vincent Van Gogh had many influences for his work.

He came to Paris, but was led to Arles in the winter of 1888, where he began painting the different intriguing landscapes. Vincent was very interested in painting night scenes and began exploring with them at the time that he created The Cafe Terrace, a scene that he experienced firsthand during his time in France. Van Gogh has been quoted as saying that he was influenced by the Arles surroundings, and that he found inspiration in the life and color of the French countryside. Van Gogh struggled with a sense of self worth crisis, and his paintings were not successful pieces during his life.

Van Gogh’s inability to sell a painting and fund his own expenses led to significant economic strain. This painting may also have been influenced by Van Gogh’s history with religious pursuits. Vincent Van Gogh’s father was a reverend, and Van Gogh served the church for a short amount of time before getting rejected for being too idealistic. This religious experience might have influenced Van Gogh’s paintings and other works later in life, including The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, At Night. Another element that may have influenced Van Gogh in his paintings could be the role and function of artists in the 19th century.

While many artists could make a successful living with painting, Van Gogh sold only one painting in his entire lifetime, which may have influenced him to work harder on his paintings. When looking at The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, At Night, I think that Van Gogh is trying to communicate the separation of the group of diners and pedestrians from the viewer. There is a large space and empty tables and chairs between the viewer and everyone in the painting, and this communicate the loneliness that I think Van Gogh is trying to convey very well.

This painting can also communicate the happiness of gathering together at night to eat and talk. The yellow lights shining off the people, walls, and the street help to communicate the brightness and togetherness of the townsfolk as they eat together. This painting makes me feel both lonely and separate from the crowd that has gotten together to eat. It also makes me happy because the people seem to be close to each other because they are sitting close together. I think about how people tend to group together at nighttime, and I feel like this is mostly a happy painting because of the brightness of the lights and the stars in the sky.

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