Café de la Gare

On 7 May 1889, Vincent took a room at the Café de la Gare on Place Lamartine at a rate of one franc per night. He had recently begun using the Yellow House as a studio. Though Vincent became friendly with the café’s owners, Joseph and Marie Ginoux, it did not stop him from arguing with them over his belief that he was paying too much:

“I’d given a piece of my mind to the said lodging-house keeper, who isn’t a bad man after all, and I’d told him that to get my own back on him for having paid him so much money for nothing, I’d paint his whole filthy old place as a way of getting my money back.” Read the complete letter

In a jocular passage of a letter Van Gogh wrote to his brother, Theo, the artist said Ginoux had taken so much of his money that he'd told the cafe owner it was time to take his revenge by painting the place.^[2]

In August 1888, the artist told his brother in a letter:

“

Today I am probably going to begin on the interior of the café where I have a room, by gaslight, in the evening. It is what they call here a “café de Nuit” (they are fairly frequent here), staying open all night. “Night prowlers” can take refuge there when they have no money to pay for lodging or are too drunk to be taken in.[4]

”

In the first days of September 1888, Van Gogh sat up for three consecutive nights to paint the picture, sleeping during the day. Little later, he sent the water-color, copying the composition and again simplifying the color scheme in order to meet the simplicity of Japanese woodblock prints.

Van Gogh's Cafe Terrace at Night, showing outdoor tables, a street scene, and the night sky, was painted in Arles at about the same time. It depicts a different cafe, a larger establishment on the Place du Forum.

On 7 May 1889, Vincent took a room at the Café de la Gare on Place Lamartine at a rate of one franc per night. He had recently begun using the Yellow House as a studio. Though Vincent became friendly with the café’s owners, Joseph and Marie Ginoux, it did not stop him from arguing with them over his belief that he was paying too much:“I’d given a piece of my mind to the said lodging-house keeper, who isn’t a bad man after all, and I’d told him that to get my own back on him for having paid him so much money for nothing, I’d paint his whole filthy old place as a way of getting my money back.” Read the complete lettered so Vincent spent three nights amid the “night owls”, painting The Night Café. He used the complementary colors of red and green in an effort to represent “the terrible human passions”. In the painting, Joseph Ginoux can be seen standing beside the billiard table, wearing white. Paul Gauguin, who came to stay with Vincent at the Yellow House in mid-October, also painted the café. His version shows Marie Ginoux sitting at a table in the foregroundVincent and Gauguin regarded Marie Ginoux, with her dark hair and local dress, as a true Arlésienne, and they both painted her portrait. When Vincent was in the asylum in Saint-Rémy, he did so several times, working from a drawing of Gauguin’s. When Vincent left Arles for Saint-Rémy on 8 May, he stored the furniture from the Yellow House at the Café de la Gare. During his stay in the asylum, he visited the Ginouxs twice and also wrote to them.

And at last the epileptic fit.

Van Gogh's Cafe Terrace at Night, showing outdoor tables, a street scene, and the night sky, was painted in Arles at about the same time. It depicts a different The next day (September 9), he wrote Theo: "In my picture of the Night Café, I have tried to express the idea that a cafe is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad or commit a crime. So I have tried to express, as it were, the powers of darkness in a low public house, by soft painted of Louis XV green and malachite, contrasting with yellow-green and harsh blue-greens, and all this in an atmosphere like a devil's furnace, of pale sulfur. And all with an appearance of Japanese gaiety, and the good nature of his tartarin paintings"

And so Vincent spent three nights amid the “night owls”, painting The Night Café. He used the complementary colors of red and green in an effort to represent “the terrible human passions”. In the painting, Joseph Ginoux can be seen standing beside the billiard table, wearing white. Paul Gauguin, who came to stay with Vincent at the Yellow House in mid-October, also painted the café. His version shows Marie Ginoux sitting at a table in the foreground.

Vincent and Gauguin regarded Marie Ginoux, with her dark hair and local dress, as a true Arlésienne, and they both painted her portrait. When Vincent was in the asylum in Saint-Rémy, he did so several times, working from a drawing of Gauguin’s.

When Vincent left Arles for Saint-Rémy on 8 May, he stored the furniture from the Yellow House at the Café de la Gare. During his stay in the asylum, he visited the Ginouxs