Van Gogh is powerfully colored Terrace of a cafe at night was inspired by a painting by Louis Anquetin, one of his fellow avant-garde artists in Paris. Anquetin’s photo from the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, has just arrived in London, where it is on display at the National Gallery After Impressionism: Inventing modern art exhibition (until August 13).
by Louis Anquetin Avenue de Clichy (Five in the evening) (late 1887)
Credit: Wadsworth Atheneum, Hertford, Connecticut (Ella Gallup and Marty Catlin Summer Collection Fund)
Avenue de Clichy, painted by Anquetin at the end of 1887, when he was 26 years old, was certainly known to Van Gogh. The two artists had met while studying at Cormon’s studio a year earlier, and they had become friends. Anquetin exhibited his painting in an exhibition organized by Van Gogh at the Restaurant du Chalet in November-December 1887. Unfortunately, the customers of this working-class restaurant despised their unconventional art.
Anquetin’s oil painting was a groundbreaking work, in part because of its cropped female head in the lower right corner and its dramatic coloring, with the warm tones of the gas lamp contrasting with the austere blues of the twilight scene. Van Gogh had introduced Anquetin to Japanese prints, which would inspire reframing. And it was Anquetin’s coloring pages that in turn inspired Van Gogh.
Although at first glance the Parisian scene of Anquetin might appear to represent the exterior of a bustling café, it was actually a butcher’s shop (which was a few doors down from the Restaurant du Chalet). The row of items hanging from the canopy are not party decorations, but hams for sale. The illuminated objects at the entrance are probably pig carcasses.
by Van Gogh Terrace of a Night Café (Place du Forum) (September 1888)
Credit: Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo
by Van Gogh Terrace of a cafe at night (September 1888) was painted about ten months after Anquetin’s painting, while he was living in Arles. The night scene represents the Grand Café du Forum, then at 11 Place du Forum. When the American writer Henry James visited Arles in 1882, he disdained the square in the center of the city, describing it as “delivered to puddles and seedy cafes”.
Travel guides of the time suggest that the Café du Forum was a cut above the rest, being one of two high-end establishments in Arles. Although Van Gogh was constantly short of money, he seems to have been a regular. Two of his artist friends, the Belgian Eugène Boch and the Dane Christian Mourier-Petersen, record went there with him. And it’s tempting to think that when Van Gogh painted his night scene, he would have summoned the waiter for a glass of wine or absinthe.
Place du Forum, postcard (1905-10)
A 1905-10 postcard shows the setting, with the Grand Café du Forum under the white awning. A spacious pee stood near where Van Gogh is said to have placed his easel.
Writing to his sister Wil, Vincent gives a detailed description of his painting: “On the terrace, there are small figures of people drinking. A huge yellow lantern illuminates the terrace, the facade, the sidewalk, and even projects light on the cobblestones of the street, which takes on a purplish pink hue. It was, he concluded, “a painting of night without black.”
In the painting, half a dozen passers-by stroll along the cobbled street, where it has recently rained (as in the scene in Anquetin). Above all of this is a clear night sky, with extremely exaggerated stars shining over Forum Square.
It is interesting to consider what Van Gogh chose to omit from his picture. Immediately to the right of the composition, but excluded from its painting, are two large columns of dark stone and the pediment of the city’s original Roman forum. These can be distinguished on the postcard, embedded in the building to the left of the hotel entrance. Van Gogh must have deliberately excluded these notable Roman antiquities, presumably believing that they would distract from his bustling contemporary café scene.
Van Gogh brilliantly captured the contrast between the warm orange-yellow glow of gaslight on the inviting terrace and the deep blue of the endless skies.
It was the nocturnal light effect that excited Vincent, as he wrote to his brother Theo: “I believe that an abundance of gas light, which after all is yellow and orange, intensifies into blue , because at night the sky here seems… darker than in Paris. He then adds that “if I ever see Paris again, I will try to paint gas effects on the boulevard”, suggesting that he considers himself in collegial rivalry with Anquetin.
As for Anquetin, after his precursor art, his paintings quickly became much more conventional. He lived until 1932, but today he is largely forgotten. Avenue de Clichy remains his masterpiece.
Cafe Van Gogh, Place du Forum, Arles
Photo: Pieter van Everdingen via Wikimedia Commons
Place du Forum, the city center for 2,000 years, is now filled with restaurant tables, usually crowded with tourists on the Van Gogh trail. If the Grand Café du Forum had become a furniture store in the 1980s, it is once again a café – named after, of course, the city’s most famous inhabitant.
The Kröller-Müller Museum Terrace of a cafe at night is not included in the collection of the National Gallery after impressionism exposure, although five other important Van Goghs are in the show.
Other Van Gogh short stories:
by Van Gogh The novel reader (November 1888)
Credit: private collection
Van Gogh’s ownership dispute The novel reader (November 1888) seems to have been resolved. Recently exhibited at the Detroit Institute of Arts exhibition Van Gogh in America, a lawsuit was launched by Miami-based Brokerarte Capital Partners to recover the painting, which had been loaned by an anonymous collector in São Paulo. The Detroit museum found itself caught in the middle of the row and was ordered by the courts to keep the painting after the exhibit closed in January. Brokerarte told the US Circuit Court of Appeals on March 13 that a confidential settlement had been reached.
