Lot Essay
The present painting has been traditionally dated 1888, the period that Van Gogh lived in Arles, and it has been tentatively identified as one of the two pictures of cafés which Van Gogh mentioned in a letter to his brother Theo on September 18, 1888 (Thames and Hudson, ed., The Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh, London, 1958 - LT 539). Moreover, it has been suggested that the picture depicts a restaurant in Arles owned by Van Gogh's friends M. and Mme. Ginoux, the latter of whom sat for L'Arlésienne (de la Faille, no. 488; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). The Arles origin of the picture may also be indicated by the costume of the woman in the center of its background, since a woman dressed in a similar manner appears in Café Terrace on the Place du Forum, which Van Gogh painted in Arles in September 1888 (fig. 1).
However, the organizers of a recent exhibition at the Rijksmuseum Vincent Van Gogh in Amsterdam have argued that the present picture was in fact executed in Paris in 1887. According to the authors of the 1990 exhibition catalogue, the picture's "style bears little resemblance to that of the works Vincent painted in Arles. This somewhat restrained impressionist mode of painting brings to mind instead works from his late Paris period, such as Agostina Segatori in Café du Tambourin (fig. 2), which is virtually identical in respect of modelling and brushstroke." (exh. cat., op. cit., Amsterdam, 1990, p. 80) The scale of the room in the present painting--with its high ceiling and long, closely placed tables--supports this dating, since it seems more appropriate for the urban setting of Montmartre than for a rustic locale such as Arles. Indeed, an 1886 drawing by Toulouse-Lautrec of Aristide Bruant's café in Paris represents an interior with similar tables arranged in a like manner (fig. 3). Nevertheless, the new dating is not definitive; the place of the present picture in Van Gogh's chronology remains to be confirmed.
Regardless of whether the present picture was finished in late 1887 or in 1888, it is a fully mature work executed after Van Gogh had integrated the results of months of experimentation into his repertoire and had begun to produce one modern masterpiece after another. The palette's play of golds, browns and yellows is typical of the artist's exploration of color in late 1887. As in other pictures from this period, Van Gogh composes with closely associated colors, varied principally in tone rather than in hue or value. Moreover, he uses the complementary hues of green and red as the major color accents in the picture, employing blue hues which contrast with the dominant yellows only as secondary color accents. This emphasis upon complementary tones reflects Van Gogh's contact with the Impressionist painters in Paris, especially Paul Signac, whose theories about color fascinated him. The luminous glow and buoyant spaciousness of the painting is in large part due to this purposeful manipulation of color.
The present picture also bears witness to Van Gogh's great interest in Japanese art. While in Paris, Van Gogh bought four or five hundred Japanese prints. He even organized an exhibit of Japanese prints at the Café du Tambourin, and persuaded many of his artist friends, including Lautrec, Anquetin and Bernard, to visit the show. Moreover, he included depictions of Japanese prints in some of his final Paris paintings, such as Portrait du Père Tanguy (fig. 4) and Agostina Segatori au Café du Tambourin (fig. 2), and directly copied a Hiroshige print in Japonaiserie, pont sous la pluie (fig. 5). His trip to Arles was inspired in part by his desire to find the "Japan of the South;" and after renting a room in the Yellow House in Arles, he asked Theo to send him Japanese prints so that he could decorate his studio (LT 534). The influence of Japanese art is especially clear in the wide-angle perspective and "cut-off" framing of the present picture, as well as in the reliance upon strong diagonals in the composition.
The painting also reveals Van Gogh at work on fundamental compositional principles which engaged him repeatedly throughout 1887 and 1888. Nowhere is this clearer than in comparison with the View of Arles with Irises in the Foreground, which Van Gogh executed in late April or early May of 1888 (fig. 6). The structure of the two paintings is remarkably similar. In both, the viewpoint is oblique to a series of rows in the foregound and midground, and in both, the foreground is set in the lower left corner of the picture; in both, a similarly shaped swath separates the foreground from the midground, and in both, the division between the midground and background is set at the exact same height. The similarities between the two pictures are all the more striking since they are identical in size. The design of other landscapes which Van Gogh painted in Arles reflects the same basic compositional principles.
Cafés and restaurants were a rare subject in Van Gogh's oeuvre, constituting only about ten of the more than eight hundred paintings which he made. Of the works in this category, the most famous are certainly the Night Café (fig. 7) and the Café Terrace on the Place du Forum (fig. 1). Van Gogh's café paintings are often dark and brooding works which reflect the artist's isolation rather than his capacity for companionship. This is especially true of the Night Café, about which Van Gogh famously remarked that it represents "a place where a person can ruin himself, go mad, commit crimes" (LT 534) and that it "expresses the terrible passions of man" (LT 533). This image of the café is strongly at odds with the typical impressionist ideal of the café and restaurant as places of release, refreshment and exchange.
The present picture is far different in tone from most of Van Gogh's paintings of cafés, closer to the impressionist ideal of urbanity. While it implicitly separates the viewer from the other diners at the far side of the room, the picture's golden tones and light, spacious atmosphere nevertheless create a peaceful, even soothing, impression, as if it were painted at a moment when Van Gogh felt an optimistic and empathetic camaraderie with his fellow compatriots. The present picture is nearly unique among Van Gogh's café pictures, comparable only to Intérieur d'un restaurant, which the artist executed in Paris in the summer of 1887 (de la Faille, no. 342; Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo). Painted as an experiment in impressionist style, that picture too has a light, colorful, cheerful air. However, that café scene was clearly painted at an interval between meals; it is devoid of human presence (hinted at merely by the top-hat on the hook at the left of center). By contrast, the present painting shows clients eating and drinking in the background. It should be noted that these two pictures were Van Gogh's first representations of cafés or restaurants from the inside, all his previous paintings of this subject depicting restaurants from the exterior.
There are six paintings on the wall in the background of the present picture. According to Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, these pictures represent Van Gogh's own works, and their inclusion here recalls the exhibition which Vincent and his friends organized in late 1887 at the Café du Chalet on the avenue de Clichy in Paris. Unfortunately, it is not possible at present to identify the paintings in the background; and even the idea that they were meant to represent pictures by Van Gogh should be carefully examined.
The chairs depicted in the foregound of the present work call to mind Van Gogh's famous paintings of his chair (fig. 8) and Gauguin's (de la Faille, no. 499; Rijksmuseum Vincent Van Gogh, Amsterdam), which he painted in Arles in 1888. Not only are the chairs similar in type, but Van Gogh has even handled the paint and composition in a like manner, creating a similar impression of negative space around the slats in the backs of the chairs.
Another version of the present painting survives in a private collection (de la Faille, no. 549a). At 25¾ x 32 in. (65.5 x 81 cm.), it is slightly larger in size; its drawing is more relaxed in tenor, and the handling of the paint is somewhat looser. De la Faille calls it a "sketchy version" of the present painting, and it unmistakeably served as a prepatory study. It was standard practice in Van Gogh's working procedure to make multiple versions of the same theme, as he worked through the artistic problems posed by a given subject.
Consensus regarding the date of the present painting will no doubt emerge in the near future as scholarship for the upcoming catalogue raisonné of Van Gogh's works advances. But whether it was painted in late 1887 or in 1888, the picture represents the same moment in Van Gogh's meteoric career, the moment when he transformed himself from a promising but crudely talented provincial into one of the major masters of modern art.
(fig. 1) Vincent Van Gogh, Café Terrace on the Place du Forum, 1888
Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo
(fig. 2) Vincent Van Gogh, Agostina Segatori au Café du Tambourin, 1887
Rijkmuseum Vincent Van Gogh (Vincent Van Gogh Foundation), Amsterdam
(fig. 3) Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Le refrain de la chaise Louis XIII au cabaret d'Aristide Bruant, 1886
Private Collection
(fig. 4) Vincent Van Gogh, Portrait du Père Tanguy, 1887
Musée Rodin, Paris
(fig. 5) Vincent Van Gogh, Japonaiserie, pont sous la pluie, d'après Hiroshige, 1887
Rijksmuseum Vincent Van Gogh, Amsterdam
(fig. 6) Vincent Van Gogh, View of Arles with Irises in the Foreground, 1888
Rijksmuseum Vincent Van Gogh, Amsterdam
(fig. 7) Vincent Van Gogh, The Night Café, 1888
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut (Bequest of Stephen Carlton Clark)
(fig. 8) Vincent Van Gogh, Van Gogh's Chair, 1888-1889
National Gallery, London
However, the organizers of a recent exhibition at the Rijksmuseum Vincent Van Gogh in Amsterdam have argued that the present picture was in fact executed in Paris in 1887. According to the authors of the 1990 exhibition catalogue, the picture's "style bears little resemblance to that of the works Vincent painted in Arles. This somewhat restrained impressionist mode of painting brings to mind instead works from his late Paris period, such as Agostina Segatori in Café du Tambourin (fig. 2), which is virtually identical in respect of modelling and brushstroke." (exh. cat., op. cit., Amsterdam, 1990, p. 80) The scale of the room in the present painting--with its high ceiling and long, closely placed tables--supports this dating, since it seems more appropriate for the urban setting of Montmartre than for a rustic locale such as Arles. Indeed, an 1886 drawing by Toulouse-Lautrec of Aristide Bruant's café in Paris represents an interior with similar tables arranged in a like manner (fig. 3). Nevertheless, the new dating is not definitive; the place of the present picture in Van Gogh's chronology remains to be confirmed.
Regardless of whether the present picture was finished in late 1887 or in 1888, it is a fully mature work executed after Van Gogh had integrated the results of months of experimentation into his repertoire and had begun to produce one modern masterpiece after another. The palette's play of golds, browns and yellows is typical of the artist's exploration of color in late 1887. As in other pictures from this period, Van Gogh composes with closely associated colors, varied principally in tone rather than in hue or value. Moreover, he uses the complementary hues of green and red as the major color accents in the picture, employing blue hues which contrast with the dominant yellows only as secondary color accents. This emphasis upon complementary tones reflects Van Gogh's contact with the Impressionist painters in Paris, especially Paul Signac, whose theories about color fascinated him. The luminous glow and buoyant spaciousness of the painting is in large part due to this purposeful manipulation of color.
The present picture also bears witness to Van Gogh's great interest in Japanese art. While in Paris, Van Gogh bought four or five hundred Japanese prints. He even organized an exhibit of Japanese prints at the Café du Tambourin, and persuaded many of his artist friends, including Lautrec, Anquetin and Bernard, to visit the show. Moreover, he included depictions of Japanese prints in some of his final Paris paintings, such as Portrait du Père Tanguy (fig. 4) and Agostina Segatori au Café du Tambourin (fig. 2), and directly copied a Hiroshige print in Japonaiserie, pont sous la pluie (fig. 5). His trip to Arles was inspired in part by his desire to find the "Japan of the South;" and after renting a room in the Yellow House in Arles, he asked Theo to send him Japanese prints so that he could decorate his studio (LT 534). The influence of Japanese art is especially clear in the wide-angle perspective and "cut-off" framing of the present picture, as well as in the reliance upon strong diagonals in the composition.
The painting also reveals Van Gogh at work on fundamental compositional principles which engaged him repeatedly throughout 1887 and 1888. Nowhere is this clearer than in comparison with the View of Arles with Irises in the Foreground, which Van Gogh executed in late April or early May of 1888 (fig. 6). The structure of the two paintings is remarkably similar. In both, the viewpoint is oblique to a series of rows in the foregound and midground, and in both, the foreground is set in the lower left corner of the picture; in both, a similarly shaped swath separates the foreground from the midground, and in both, the division between the midground and background is set at the exact same height. The similarities between the two pictures are all the more striking since they are identical in size. The design of other landscapes which Van Gogh painted in Arles reflects the same basic compositional principles.
Cafés and restaurants were a rare subject in Van Gogh's oeuvre, constituting only about ten of the more than eight hundred paintings which he made. Of the works in this category, the most famous are certainly the Night Café (fig. 7) and the Café Terrace on the Place du Forum (fig. 1). Van Gogh's café paintings are often dark and brooding works which reflect the artist's isolation rather than his capacity for companionship. This is especially true of the Night Café, about which Van Gogh famously remarked that it represents "a place where a person can ruin himself, go mad, commit crimes" (LT 534) and that it "expresses the terrible passions of man" (LT 533). This image of the café is strongly at odds with the typical impressionist ideal of the café and restaurant as places of release, refreshment and exchange.
The present picture is far different in tone from most of Van Gogh's paintings of cafés, closer to the impressionist ideal of urbanity. While it implicitly separates the viewer from the other diners at the far side of the room, the picture's golden tones and light, spacious atmosphere nevertheless create a peaceful, even soothing, impression, as if it were painted at a moment when Van Gogh felt an optimistic and empathetic camaraderie with his fellow compatriots. The present picture is nearly unique among Van Gogh's café pictures, comparable only to Intérieur d'un restaurant, which the artist executed in Paris in the summer of 1887 (de la Faille, no. 342; Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo). Painted as an experiment in impressionist style, that picture too has a light, colorful, cheerful air. However, that café scene was clearly painted at an interval between meals; it is devoid of human presence (hinted at merely by the top-hat on the hook at the left of center). By contrast, the present painting shows clients eating and drinking in the background. It should be noted that these two pictures were Van Gogh's first representations of cafés or restaurants from the inside, all his previous paintings of this subject depicting restaurants from the exterior.
There are six paintings on the wall in the background of the present picture. According to Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, these pictures represent Van Gogh's own works, and their inclusion here recalls the exhibition which Vincent and his friends organized in late 1887 at the Café du Chalet on the avenue de Clichy in Paris. Unfortunately, it is not possible at present to identify the paintings in the background; and even the idea that they were meant to represent pictures by Van Gogh should be carefully examined.
The chairs depicted in the foregound of the present work call to mind Van Gogh's famous paintings of his chair (fig. 8) and Gauguin's (de la Faille, no. 499; Rijksmuseum Vincent Van Gogh, Amsterdam), which he painted in Arles in 1888. Not only are the chairs similar in type, but Van Gogh has even handled the paint and composition in a like manner, creating a similar impression of negative space around the slats in the backs of the chairs.
Another version of the present painting survives in a private collection (de la Faille, no. 549a). At 25¾ x 32 in. (65.5 x 81 cm.), it is slightly larger in size; its drawing is more relaxed in tenor, and the handling of the paint is somewhat looser. De la Faille calls it a "sketchy version" of the present painting, and it unmistakeably served as a prepatory study. It was standard practice in Van Gogh's working procedure to make multiple versions of the same theme, as he worked through the artistic problems posed by a given subject.
Consensus regarding the date of the present painting will no doubt emerge in the near future as scholarship for the upcoming catalogue raisonné of Van Gogh's works advances. But whether it was painted in late 1887 or in 1888, the picture represents the same moment in Van Gogh's meteoric career, the moment when he transformed himself from a promising but crudely talented provincial into one of the major masters of modern art.
(fig. 1) Vincent Van Gogh, Café Terrace on the Place du Forum, 1888
Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo
(fig. 2) Vincent Van Gogh, Agostina Segatori au Café du Tambourin, 1887
Rijkmuseum Vincent Van Gogh (Vincent Van Gogh Foundation), Amsterdam
(fig. 3) Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Le refrain de la chaise Louis XIII au cabaret d'Aristide Bruant, 1886
Private Collection
(fig. 4) Vincent Van Gogh, Portrait du Père Tanguy, 1887
Musée Rodin, Paris
(fig. 5) Vincent Van Gogh, Japonaiserie, pont sous la pluie, d'après Hiroshige, 1887
Rijksmuseum Vincent Van Gogh, Amsterdam
(fig. 6) Vincent Van Gogh, View of Arles with Irises in the Foreground, 1888
Rijksmuseum Vincent Van Gogh, Amsterdam
(fig. 7) Vincent Van Gogh, The Night Café, 1888
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut (Bequest of Stephen Carlton Clark)
(fig. 8) Vincent Van Gogh, Van Gogh's Chair, 1888-1889
National Gallery, London