Café Terrace at Night

History

Van Gogh painted it in Arles in September 1888, on the Place du Forum, with his easel in the street after dark. It was the first painting in which he used a starry sky. He wrote that it was a night painting without black, nothing but blue, violet and green, with the lit terrace in pale sulphur yellow and lemon green. The café is still there, painted yellow again to match. It hangs in the Kröller-Müller Museum, which grew from the collection of Helene Kröller-Müller.