Usuario:Syamhope/The Night Café in Arles

Night Cafe, Arles (Café de Nuit, Arles)
Año	1888
Autor	Paul Gauguin
Técnica	Oil Painting on Canva
Estilo	Post impressionism
Tamaño	72 cm × 92 cm
Localización	Pushkin Museum, Moscow, Rusia Rusia

Night Cafe in Arles (original title in French Café de Nuit, Arles) is an oil painting of Paul Gauguin painted among the 4th and 12th of November 1888 in Arlés, at Vincent van Gogh's home. It's conserved at the Museum Pushkin of Moscow: under the referential numbers 305 of the Wildenstein catalogue,1964, and 318 of the Daniel Wildenstein catalogue, 2001 (W 305 / W 318).

Description

In the foreground of the painting is Madame Ginoux's portrait: the French woman is wearing the traditional Arlesian garment - a black shawl and white tul. She's seating and leaning on a marble table with a siphon, a drink and two sugar lumps on a little plate.

Behind her is the interior scene of the café, with a billiard table and a tobacco smoke in the middle; and Van Gogh's usual characters. In the background among them, a group of three women, probably street prostitutes, are chatting animatedly with a postman identifiable thanks to his typical cap. On the left there is a man sleeping on the table and next to him a zouave, a soldier of the infantry corps in his Algerian uniform.In a letter to Émile Bernard, Gauguin describes it:

I've also painted a cafe which Vicent loves much more than I do. In the end, this is not my style and I don't like the cafe's color either. I like it more in others but it always leaves me stirred. It's about education and one's can't recover from it. At the top a red paper with three prostitutes. One with «papillotes» decorating her head, the second and third ones with a green and a vermilion shawl each. On the left a late riser. Biliard - in the foreground a quite great Arlesian figure in a black shawl and a white tul in front. A marble table. A blue smoke thread crosses the painting, even though the figure in the foreground is quite enough. Anyway. ​

It is signed twice "PGauguin 88:" down to the right of the white table, and on the left side of the billiard. It can suggest that he might had changed a first version of the painting.

Context

In October, 1888, Gauguin traveled to Arlés, in Provence, to gather with Vincent van Gogh. This latter wanted to create an artists studio so he got him convinced thank to his brother, Theo go Gogh who was sponsoring both of them. For this purpose go Gogh had prepared a house, known like the Yellow House, number two of the Lamartin square, north Arles near to the train station.

Night Cafe (1888), of V. Van Gogh.

Gauguin arrived in the first morning by train from Pont-Aven, in Brittany, and decided to wait at the train station cafe (Café de la Gare), no. 30 of the Lamartin square, until the daylight.​It was so called a «cafe of night» (coffee of nuit), opened the 24 hours, where the vagrants, drunkards and prostitutes of the street found their refuge at night.​The owner was Joseph Ginoux who had opened the cafe at the beginning of that year. Van Gogh used to spend time there and just a month and half before he had painted its night environment at the Le Café de Nuit.

Arlesian With the Venus (1860), of Augustin Dumas.

Van Gogh showed Arles to Gauguin, but he was especially interested in Arlesians.​ In the XVII century the Venus of Arles came to ligth so the myth of the Arlesian beauty became popular. In fact, in his poetry Frederic Mistral praised them as the provential beauty prototype; also Alphonse Daudet had written the masterpiece of L' Arlésienne on a fatal woman and that hugely succeeded, in 1888, adapted to the theatre with Georges Bizet's music. Van Gogh was aiming at portrating an Arlersian but could'nt find any model to pose for him. Whereas just in a week, Gauguin gained his fame of gentleman, and already had found a model: Marie Ginoux (1848 - 1911), the woman of the «Café de la Gare» owner.

Madame Ginoux posed for the two painters with the traditional Arlesian garment for celebrations, that is to say, a dark dress made of a white bodice made with local tire and hair decorations. In an hour Van Gogh had completed her portrait. «Finally I have an Arlesian», wrote to his brother.​ Shortly after, he did a second version with daromg colours and bolder outlines, closer to Gugin's style. By his part, during the same session Gauguin did a charcoal drawing, and during the following week started from it to compose the portrait in the studio and situating it in the Night Cafe.​

• 
  DrawingThe Arlesian, Madame Ginoux(1888), of P. Gauguin.
• 
  The Arlesiana(With umbrella and gloves)(1888), of V. Van Gogh.
• 
  The Arlesiana(With books)(1888), of V. Van Gogh.

External links

• Wikimedia Commons alberga una categoría multimedia sobre Syamhope/The Night Café in Arles.

[[Categoría:Food and drink paintings]] [[Categoría:1888 in France]] [[Categoría:1888 paintings]] [[Categoría:Collection of the Pushkin Museum]] [[Categoría:Cats in art]] [[Categoría:Genre paintings]]