Café Terrace at Night

Café Terrace at Night, also called Terrace of a Café at Night (Place du Forum), is an oil painting on canvas by Vincent van Gogh, made in Arles around 16 September 1888 and now in the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo. It measures 80.7 × 65.3 cm.

Van Gogh had wanted for some time to paint a night scene, and not in the conventional greys and blacks but in full colour. Unusually, he painted it on the spot in the dark, setting up his easel at the north-east corner of the Place du Forum and looking south towards the gas-lit terrace of a popular café and the dark rue du Palais beyond. Writing to his sister Willemien, he said he enormously enjoyed painting at night on the spot, called the work a painting of night without black, and compared its subject to the opening of Guy de Maupassant's novel Bel-Ami, with its starry Paris night and lit cafés.

A large yellow lantern lights the awning, the façade and the terrace with its small figures of drinkers, and throws a pinkish-violet light on the cobbles, while the houses along the street and the star-studded sky are deep blue and violet. Van Gogh noted that abundant gaslight, being yellow and orange, intensified the blue. Astronomical research has shown that he set down the stars as they appeared on the night of 16 or 17 September 1888. It was the first of his paintings with a starry sky, followed the same month by Starry Night Over the Rhône and in 1889 by The Starry Night.

The canvas is not signed, but Van Gogh described it in three letters. It was first exhibited in 1891 under the title Café, le soir. Helene Kröller-Müller, a great admirer of Van Gogh, later acquired it for her collection, which became the Kröller-Müller Museum. The café on the square, refurbished in 1990–91 to resemble the painting, still draws visitors.