The Night Cafe
by Eric Glaser
Title
The Night Cafe
Artist
Eric Glaser
Medium
Painting - Oil On Canvas
Description
"The Night Café"
Artist: Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch, 1853-1890)
Title: The Night Café
Le café de nuit (The Night Café)
Dutch: Het nachtcafé
Genre: Genre art
Date: 1888
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: Height: 72.4 cm (28.5 in); Width: 92.1 cm (36.2 in)
Collection: Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven CT USA
Place of Creation: Arles, France
Credit Line: Bequest of Stephen Carlton Clark, B.A. 1903
Inscriptions: Signature bottom right: Vincent Le café de nuit
Provenance:
Probably sent by Vincent from Arles in May 1889, among a large shipment to Theo in Paris; Mme. Johanna. van Gogh-Bonger, Amsterdam; sold to Berheim-Jeune in April 1907; J.A. Morosov, Moscow (acquired at the Exhibition of the Golden Fleece, Moscow, 1908), Museum of Modern Art, Moscow in spring 1919; M. Knoedler Gallery, New York, by Spring 1933 via Mattheisen Gallery, Berlin; Stephen C. Clark, New York, by 1933/34–1961; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn.
In a letter to his brother written from Arles in the south of France, van Gogh described the Café de l’Alcazar, where he took his meals, as “blood red and dull yellow with a green billiard table in the center, four lemon yellow lamps with an orange and green glow. Everywhere there is a clash and contrast of the most disparate reds and greens.” The clashing colors were also meant to express the “terrible passions of humanity” found in this all-night haunt, populated by vagrants and prostitutes. Van Gogh also felt that colors took on an intriguing quality at night, especially by gaslight: in this painting, he wanted to show how “the white clothing of the café owner, keeping watch in a corner of this furnace, becomes lemon yellow, pale and luminous green.”
Text Credit: Yale University Art Gallery
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Additional image editing by Eric Glaser
Uploaded
August 27th, 2020
Embed
Share
