Café Terrace at Night (1888)

How to look at it

Start under the awning, where the gas lamp turns the wall, the tables and the floor a hot yellow and orange. Follow the cobblestones out of the light, where they turn blue and violet. Then look up the narrow street to the stars: not white dots but small flowers of light on deep blue.

Why this one

A night painting without black. Van Gogh wrote to his sister Wil that it was "a painting of night without black," all blue, violet and green, with the lighted square "pale sulphur, lemon green" (letter 678, September 1888). (Our reading: he built the night from color rather than darkness.)

Painted on the spot, after dark. The Kröller-Müller Museum says he painted the gas-lit terrace in situ, in the dark. He told Wil: "I enormously enjoy painting on the spot at night" (letter 678), and told Theo on 16 September that he had painted the café "lit on the terrace outside by a large gas-lamp in the blue night, with a patch of starry blue sky" (letter 681).

The first starry sky. The Kröller-Müller Museum calls it the first starry sky in his work. Later in 1888 came Starry Night over the Rhône (Musée d'Orsay), and in June 1889, in Saint-Rémy, The Starry Night.

A real square. The café is the Grand Café du Forum on the Place du Forum in Arles (Van Gogh Letters edition, letter 678, note 12).

This canvas

Oil on canvas, 80.7 × 65.3 cm (31¾ × 25¾ in), Arles, September 1888. The canvas hangs in the Netherlands. Van Gogh did not sign it.

Fact gap. Unusually for a night scene, Van Gogh painted the terrace on the spot, in the dark, by gaslight, and museum-reported astronomical research matches the stars to the sky of 16 or 17 September 1888. See what the record says.

Sizes vs the original

• 8×10 a desk or shelf piece, the lamp glowing in your hand
• 16×20 about two thirds of the real canvas, the street reads from across a room
• 24×30 very close to its true size (25¾×31¾), a night square on your wall

Paper & ship

Archival matte fine art paper, no bleed, 4:5 proportion, within about one percent of the canvas. Printed from the public domain photograph of the painting without remastering the color. Made to order, rolled in a tube. A soft black or deep walnut frame both suit it.

Quick answers

Where is the café? On the Place du Forum in Arles, in the south of France. Van Gogh painted the Grand Café du Forum there in September 1888.

Is this The Starry Night? No. Café Terrace came first, in September 1888 in Arles. The Starry Night was painted in June 1889 in Saint-Rémy.

Is this an original painting? No. It is an archival reproduction of the 1888 canvas.

Is the image public domain? Yes. Van Gogh died in 1890, and the photograph we print from is a faithful public domain reproduction. No museum endorses this shop.