Episode notes
In mid-September 1888 Vincent van Gogh set up his easel at the northeastern corner of the Place du Forum in Arles, facing a gas-lit coffeehouse terrace beside the dark Rue du Palais, and painted the final oil on the spot at night. He refused to use black paint, telling his sister that studio night scenes looked pale and dead, and he admitted he might mistake blue for green or confuse lilacs in the dark. Instead he set saturated yellows against blues and violets so the terrace seems lit from within. It was his first painting with a starry sky, a year before The Starry Night.
Art historian Albert Boime matched the painted stars to the constellation Aquarius and used them to date the work to early September around 11 p.m., yet Van Gogh left out the Roman ruins that stood nearby. Scholars have tied the painting to Guy de Maupassant's novel Bel-Ami and to Louis Anquetin's Avenue de Clichy, and a 2014 paper argued it is a coded Last Supper, painted during what he told his brother Theo was a terrible need for religion.
- Maupassant's opening scene describes lit cafes on a dark night and never mentions stars, suggesting Van Gogh projected his own obsession onto it.
- Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov argued in 1981 that Anquetin's funnel perspective, blue and yellow palette, and flat outlined color shaped the painting.
- The canvas shows 12 diners around a central figure lit like a halo, framed by a cross shape in the window panes behind.
- Van Gogh had just bought 12 straw-bottom chairs for the artists' commune he hoped to found at the Yellow House.
- The painting hangs at the Kröller-Müller Museum, and Arles refurbished the site in the early 1990s to match his version.