Golden Café Terrace at Night

About this work

The picture is built on a strong diagonal. The awning and the lit terrace fill the left side, the cobbles run down towards the bottom right, and the eye travels between the two, from warm lamplight into the gold-flecked cobbled street and back again. Small tables and chairs sit under the glow, with a few seated figures kept loose and suggestive rather than detailed. Blue houses with green shutters close in from both sides, so the sky appears as a deep ultramarine wedge above, packed with gold star shapes. Thick impasto strokes give every surface ridges you can almost feel, and gold leaf catches on the stones and among the stars. Close to, the flecks of gold glint separately; from the far side of a room they melt into one warm evening light, sociable and quietly festive.

Vincent van Gogh painted the original Café Terrace at Night in Arles in September 1888, setting up his easel in the street after dark instead of working from memory in the studio. It is often described as the first painting in which he used the starry-sky motif that returned soon afterwards in Starry Night over the Rhône and, the following year, in The Starry Night. Writing to his sister Wilhelmina, he called it a night picture without any black, made only with beautiful blue, violet and green. The original hangs in the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, in the Netherlands. Ours is reimagined rather than copied: gold leaf now lights the stars and is scattered across the cobbles, and the brushwork is thicker still.

Hang it with Golden Wheatfield with Cypresses for a Van Gogh pair, night in town beside daylight in the fields, or set it near Golden Skyline, whose amber windows and black sky share the same after-dark warmth. Navy, deep teal, olive and warm ochre walls bring out the blues and the orange alike, while white walls make it brighter and more graphic. A slim black or antique gold frame works well, and an ivory mat of around six centimetres gives the starry sky some calm. Printed from the 7168 × 10752 px file, it stays sharp to about 60 × 90 cm, generous enough for a dining wall. A Frame TV version with a gallery mat is included.