Night Cafe Revisited Watercolor Painting

This is the cafe in Arles where Vincent Van Gogh did his famous painting “Night Cafe.” I looked it up when I was in Provence and it is maintained just the way it was in Van Gogh’s painting. The only difference is the wooden and metal french cafe chairs have been replaced by white plastic chairs. I took the liberty of painting in the old cafe chairs similar to the chairs in Van Gogh’s painting. The cafe is crowded with tourists these days but I was able to get a few photo’s and do a few quick sketches from the same vantage point where Van Gogh painted his masterpiece. The night lighting is beautiful and the way it illuminates the colors of Provence is magical. In this painting I tried to capture how it looked with the old gas lighting from the 1880’s. I own a puzzle of Van Gogh’s “Night Cafe” painting and by putting it together piece by piece I learned more about his painting than I could ever learn from studying an art history book.