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Café Terrace at Night by van Gogh
An 1888 oil on canvas, Café Terrace at Night, by Vincent van Gogh (1853-90), the Dutch post-impressionist artist. Painted in September in the place du Forum of Arles, France. The artist here uses the strong contrasting colours of yellow and blue for dramatic effect. Deliberately distorting the perspective, van Gogh makes the roof of the café terrace the centre of the scene, and by placing the clients at the far end only, he draws in the eye of the viewer to the heart of the picture and the café. The artist was particularly keen to capture the black night using only blues and violets. The work was not done in the studio but plein air (open air) – the typical technique used by impressionists – so that the artist could accurately capture the colouring even if he himself noted it was not always easy to see which colours he was actually using in the dim light. (Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands)
Bibliography
- McQuillan, Melissa & Van Gogh, Vincent. Van Gogh . Thames & Hudson, 1989.
- Van Gogh, Vincent & de Leeuw, Ronald & Pomerans, Arnold J. The Letters of Vincent van Gogh . Penguin Classics, 1998.
- Walther, Ingo F. & Metzger, Rainer. Van Gogh. The Complete Paintings. TASCHEN, 2020.
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License & Copyright
Based on Wikipedia content that has been reviewed, edited, and republished.
Original image by Kröller-Müller Museum. Uploaded by Mark Cartwright, published on 16 March 2022. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Public Domain. This item is in the public domain, and can be used, copied, and modified without any restrictions. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.
