Van Gogh’s Cafe Terrace at Night is a perfect example of the artist’s fascination with, and exquisite handling of, light. In the same vein as his Impressionist predecessors, Van Gogh set out to capture the colors of light most particularly at night.

Van Gogh’s interest in painting the colors of night stemmed from his desire to create a truly original art and, by extension, move away from realism. Painting by night was a way for the artist to distort his perception. Unable to see clearly, Van Gogh was almost forced to infuse his pictures with his singular imagination as well as to develop a brilliant and at times shocking palette.

The result of his “nighttime” efforts is a series of pictures comprised of exhilarating and unusual juxtapositions of bright-hues that lend to his oeuvre an abstract and otherworldly quality.

In Cafe Terrace at Night Van Gogh continues to explore the colors of night. Here, however, the night sky is illuminated by artificial gas lanterns of the partially depicted exterior of a Parisian café. Van Gogh’s enthusiasm for this work is well documented.

Upon finishing Cafe Terrace at Night Van Gogh proudly wrote to his sister of his completion of a night scene without using black. He was particularly delighted by the pinkish violet tone of the paving stones of the road as well as the fact that he painted the night on the spot rather than painting during the daytime after the sketch. This dedication to immediacy and keen ability to depict the colors of an instant is precisely what made Van Gogh the supreme colorist of his time.