| Object: | "Le café de nuit (The Night Café),"Vincent van Gogh |
| Date: | 1888 |
| Medium: | Oil on canvas |
| Where to find: | Yale University Art Gallery |
What to know: Dutch post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) depicts the "terrible passions of humanity" in this painting of the Café de la Gare in Arles, France, where he often took his meals during the fourteen months that he lived in the city. At night, under the gaslight, the interior of the café takes on wildly contrasting colors: the billiard table becomes an unsettling green, the walls take on a vivid red, and the owner's white suit flickers a pale yellow.
From the expert: "According to a letter to his sister Willemien, van Gogh painted the scene using '6 or 7 different reds, from blood-red to delicate pink, contrasting with the same number of pale or dark greens,'" says Jessie Park, the Nina and Lee Griggs Assistant Curator of European Art at the Yale University Art Gallery. "These clashing colors convey not only an aura of restlessness but also express - as he wrote to his brother Theo - 'an idea that [the café] is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime.'
"The Café de la Gare must have borne a substantial degree of significance for van Gogh; in a highly unusual fashion, the artist gave this painting a title, which appears below his signature at lower right."
