Café Terrace at Night, 1888
Vincent van Gogh
Oil on canvas · 80.7 x 65.3 cm
A yellow-lit terrace glows against a deep blue, star-flecked Arles sky.
Van Gogh paints a warm gas-lit café terrace glowing gold beneath a deep blue, star-scattered sky — his first canvas of a night scene without any black. Inviting and luminous, it is one of the most beloved and atmospheric images he ever made.
What you're looking at
There is no black in it anywhere. Van Gogh made the whole night scene out of blue and violet, which is why it glows rather than recedes — he wrote about doing exactly this. The terrace is still there, on the Place du Forum in Arles. The cobbles are built from separate dabs of pink, blue and grey rather than a paved surface, and the stars are not points but white-yellow discs with haloes around them, painted the size of small moons.
On a Frame TV
Portrait, about 3:4, so this needs the matted file — the clean crop would take either the sky or the terrace, and the picture is the meeting of the two. Warm and high in contrast, which makes it one of the easier dark works to live with in a room that has lamps on.
Kröller-Müller Museum · Visit it in Otterlo →
- 4K master file (3840px+)
- Samsung Frame TV–ready crop
- Phone wallpaper crop
- Printable art card
Public domain · one .zip, no sign-up
More like this
Other works in the collection, starting with Vincent van Gogh.
