The Night Café
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| The Night Café |
| Vincent van Gogh, 1888 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 72.4 × 92.1 cm |
| Yale University Art Gallery |
The Night Café (original French title: Le Café de nuit) is an oil painting executed on industrial primed canvas of size 30 (French standard) in Arles in September 1888, by Vincent van Gogh. Its title is inscribed lower right beneath the signature.
The interieur depicted is the Café de la Gare, 30 Place Lamartine, run by Joseph-Michel and his wife Marie Ginoux, who in November 1888 posed for Van Gogh's and Gauguin's Arlésienne; a bit later, Joseph Ginoux evidently posed for both artists, too.
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[edit] Genesis
Already in August Van Gogh told his brother Theo:
- 'Today I am probably going to begin on the interior of the café where I have a room, by gas light, in the evening. It is what they call here a “café de nuit” (they are fairly frequent here), staying open all night. “Night prowlers” can take refuge there when they have no money to pay for a lodging, or are too drunk to be taken in.'[1]
In the first days of September 1888, Van Gogh sat up for three consecutive nights to paint the picture, sleeping during the day.[2] Little later, he sent the water-colour, copying the composition and again simplyfing the colour scheme on order to meet the simplicity of Japanese woodblock prints.
[edit] Colour suggestive of emotion
Van Gogh wrote many letters to his brother Theo van Gogh, and often included details of his latest work. In one of the letters[3] he describes this painting:
| “ | I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green. The room is blood red and dark yellow with a green billiard table in the middle; there are four lemon-yellow lamps with a glow of orange and green. Everywhere there is a clash and contrast of the most alien reds and greens, in the figures of little sleeping hooligans, in the empty dreary room, in violet and blue. The blood-red and the yellow-green of the billiard table, for instance, contrast with the soft tender Louis XV green of the counter, on which there is a rose nosegay. The white clothes of the landlord, watchful in a corner of that furnace, turn lemon-yellow, or pale luminous green. | ” |
Soon after its execution, Van Gogh incorporated this painting into his Décoration for the Yellow House.[4]
[edit] Gauguin's competition piece
Soon after his arrival in Arles, Paul Gauguin painted the same location, as a background to his portrait of Madame Ginoux.[5] It was also acquired by Ivan Morozov and now hangs in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts.[citation needed]
[edit] Resources
This painting is mentioned in several letters of the artists: see
[edit] Pedigree
The painting, formerly a highlight of the Ivan Morozov collection in Moscow, was sold by the Soviet authorities in the 1930s. Via Wildenstein the painting was acquired by Stephen Carlton Clark who bequeathed it to the art gallery of Yale University.
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Dorn, Roland: Décoration: Vincent van Gogh's Werkreihe für das Gelbe Haus in Arles, Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim, Zürich & New York 1990, pp. 370-375 ISBN 3-487-09098-8 / ISSN 0175-9558
[edit] See also
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