Café Terrace at Night

Café Terrace at Night
Café-Terrace-at-Night-by-Vincent-Van-Gogh
Artist Vincent van Gogh
Year 1888
Medium Oil on canvas
Location Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo
Dimensions 31.8 in × 25.7 in
80.7 cm × 65.3 cm
Vincent van Gogh Famous Paintings
The Starry Night, 1889
Sunflowers, 1888
Starry Night Over the Rhone, 1888
Irises, 1889
The Potato Eaters, 1885
Yellow House, 1888
Café Terrace at Night, 1888
The Red Vineyard, 1888
Outskirts of Paris, 1887

The oil on canvas painting Café Terrace at Night is a Vincent van Gogh work completed in 1888. The painting is also referred to as The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, and is held by the Kroller-Muller Museum in Ottelro in the Netherlands, which is home to the second largest collection of Van Gogh’s paintings.

The location for the work is a street in Arles, France. It remains virtually unchanged to the present day, and the café still exists but is now called Café van Gogh.

Composition

The café terrace itself dominates the left side of the painting. Several people are seated around the white tables on the terrace, which is covered by a large awning. A waiter, dressed predominantly in white, stands in front of one of the tables, holding a tray. Several of the tables are unoccupied.

The right side of the painting depicts other buildings and several pedestrians on the cobbled street. Overhead, the sky is dotted with stars. Café Terrace at Night is the first Van Gogh painting to feature a star-studded sky.