Café Terrace at Night

"Café Terrace at Night" by Vincent van Gogh

Location: Arles, France

Café Terrace at Night is an oil painting by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh painted in 1988. It's also known as "The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum", but when it was first publically exhibited in 1891 they referred to the piece as the Coffeehouse in the Evening or in French (Café, le soir). Van Gogh painted Café Terrace at Night in Arles, France, in mid-September 1888, about 3 months prior to his mental breakdown and disfigured his ear.

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."

All our prints are shipped in high quality aluminum frames. Our EFX watermark will not be printed on the final artwork. All of our products are printed on archival quality UV light resistant polyester.

Color Changing Fine Art Print
Painter: Vincent van Gogh 
Composition by: EFX Gallery
© 2022 EFX™ Gallery

Source: Vincent van Gogh, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons