The Night Café

1888

Oil on canvas, 72.4 × 92.1 cm. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven

A few drinkers slump at tables in a harshly lit room at night. He meant the place to feel like somewhere a person could go to ruin.

Blood-red walls clash with a green billiard table and ceiling. As he told Theo, the clash was meant to express dark human passions rather than describe the room.
Look at the lamps, each ringed by halos of yellow and orange strokes.
He studied gaslight's effect: the owner's white clothes shift toward lemon yellow and pale green.
The title is painted below the signature at lower right.
Once owned by Ivan Morozov in Moscow, it came to Yale in 1961 by Stephen Carlton Clark's bequest.

It was the Café de l'Alcazar in Arles, an all-night haunt of drifters and prostitutes. He took his meals there.