Vincent van Gogh’s “The Cafe Terrace”

I photographed the original building in Arles, France as it exists today and here placed it beside his famous painting.

Vincent van Gogh’s “The Cafe Terrace” stands as one of the painter’s most remarkable works. It is also, without question, one of the most famous produced in Van Gogh’s brief but prolific career.
This work is the first in a trilogy of paintings which feature starlit skies. “Starry Night Over the Rhone”, came within a month, followed by the popular, “Starry Night” painted the next year in Saint-Rémy.

In a letter to his sister van Gogh wrote:

“In point of fact I was interrupted these days by my toiling on a new picture representing the outside of a night cafe. On the terrace there are tiny figures of people drinking. An enormous yellow lantern sheds its light on the terrace, the house and the sidewalk even, causes a certain brightness on the pavement of the street, which takes a pinkish violet tone. The gable-topped fronts of the houses in a street stretching away under a blue sky spangled with stars are dark blue or violet and there is a green tree. Here you have a night picture without any black in it, done with nothing but beautiful blue and violet and green, and in these surroundings the lighted square acquires a pale sulphur and greenish citron-yellow colour. It amuses me enormously to paint the night right on the spot. They used to draw and paint the picture in the daytime after the rough sketch. But I find satisfaction in painting things immediately.”
(September 1888)

Thanks for reading. I have several other articles on Medium. I am also the author of “Inside The Star Wars Empire: A Memoir” published by Rowman & Littlefield. You can find my book about my years in motion pictures, working on Star Wars, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan and many more. My book is in Barnes & Noble and many fine bookstores including Amazon.