Café Terrace at Night, Place du Forum, Arles, 1888 - by Van Gogh
Image ID: 29333
Under a swirl of starlit sky, the vibrant Café Terrace at Night captures the lively essence of a public square in Arles, France. Vincent van Gogh masterfully employs bold, contrasting hues to evoke a luminous atmosphere where the warm yellows of the café’s façade glow against the cool blues of the twilight. In this pioneering piece, angular lines and the dynamic play of light and shadow invite viewers to feel the pulse of late 19th-century Arles nightlife. Figures gather, some seated at the café’s outdoor tables, undulating within an almost palpable buzz of conversation and clinking glasses. This painting not only exemplifies the innovative techniques Van Gogh experimented with during his time in Arles but also evokes the emotional intensity for which his work is celebrated, making the viewer yearn to join the quaint scene. *** About Café Terrace at Night: Created during a particularly prolific period of Van Gogh's life, Café Terrace at Night was painted in September 1888. This period was marked by a transition into what many consider his most expressive phase, intensifying his color palette and embracing a more emotive depiction of his surroundings. Inspired by the atmospheric effects of light at night, Van Gogh chose this café setting to explore these notions, turning an ordinary scene into an extraordinary display of color and emotion under artificial lighting—a novel concept at the time. Today, this painting resides in the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands, contributing to its renown as a fine example of Van Gogh's pioneering use of color and a nightly ambiance rarely depicted so vividly at the time.
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Artists: Bierstadt, Bouguereau, Caillebotte, Cassatt, Cezanne, Corot, Degas, Gauguin, Gerstl, Gris, Klimt, Macke, Manet, Marc, Modersohn-Becker, Modigliani, Monet, Morisot, Pissaro, Poussin, Renoir, Schiele, Seurat, Sisley, Tissot, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, |
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