Take a close look at Van Gogh's famous "Café Terrace at Night" painting and see what makes this painting a success in both composition and execution. Apply what you learn to your own artworks to see improvement in your compositions.
There's a cliché that says a candle burns brightest just before it burns out. That could apply to Vincent Van Gogh and his time spent in Arles. During this chaotic period at the end of his life, he painted most of the icon works we associate with the artist, and that includes this work, “Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum,” also known as “Cafe Terrance at Night.”
Painted in September 1888 it depicts a popular coffee shop along the Rue du Palais, and it is a painting of stark contrasts; there's the bright light of the cafe versus the darkness of the street. The warm artificial light versus the cool light of the night sky. The crowds seated at the tables versus the relative emptiness of the street.
That eye is drawn around the canvas through the brilliant use of color. The cafe is lit by a single globe of light, but in comparison to the the rest of the scene, the light is absolutely blinding. As viewers we're drawn into the cafe like moths to a flame. But find respite in the cooler colors away from the burning light.
Van Gogh subtly uses one-point perspective. The composition is built on converging lines created by the tables and the angle of the buildings, directing us not into the cafe but past the cafe down the street. We are as viewers merely passing by. And the while cafe looks inviting, there's this wall of empty tables in the foreground that seems to rebuff our advances. Van Gogh was known to work from life, but who knows if he painted the scene at night. It would seem rather difficult. However, there exists this preparatory sketch. You can almost image the isolation, of the artist as he stands at a distance observing the cafe patrons enjoying themselves.
This is Van Gogh's first attempt at rendering the effects of the night sky, a subject that he would explore more fully in his later work, Starry Night. A cafe still stands today at this location, and it's been remodeled to look like the Van Gogh painting. Consider it art imitating life, imitating art.
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