Vincent Van Gogh's Later Life

In Vincent van Gogh’s later life, he breaks through with a unique style that he developed over years. He was one of the Post-Impressionists who approached art differently by going further than just aesthetical attributes. Vincent van Gogh engaged with emotions and expressed them through his art (Metmuseum.org, 2014).

Unfortunately, like other artists, Vincent was not an accepted artist because of his ways of looking at art. Unlike painting with light and aesthetically pleasing colours, van Gogh would paint with greys. His artworks were not selling and were rejected by the public. He started drinking and smoking because of his increasing depression but was still motivated to paint He brightened his colour palette and with several other artists

This artwork was painted in 1888. In this year Van Gogh had big hopes that his movement would undergo a success- and so after going back to Arles (Having received an offer to work for his brother in exchange for a sponsorship))-he thought of starting a school with Gauguin and other painters(YouTube, 2006).

Vincent painted but discovered that his dream was not being achieved because of Gauguin’s non-appearance. During his solitude, waiting for Gauguin, Van Gogh painted 14 artworks (among them “The Night Cafe”). These paintings were the beginning to his love for complementary colours (Metmuseum.org, 2014). He was fascinated by how they would create drama in an artwork.

The Night Café is 72.4 cm wide and 92.1 cm long landscape oil painting. The colours used in this artwork are complementary (red and green). The other colours, like blues and yellow create disharmony (Artgallery.yale.edu, 2014). The idea behind the harsh colours is to make the viewer feel uneasy and unsettling and create the atmosphere in this

The room is blood red and dark yellow with a green billiard table in the middle; there are four lemon-yellow lamps with a glow of orange and green. Everywhere there is a clash and contrast of the most alien reds and greens, in the figures of little sleeping hooligans, in the empty dreary room, in violet and blue. The blood-red and the yellow-green of the billiard table, for instance, contrast with the soft tender Louis XV green of the counter, on which there is a rose nosegay. The white clothes of the landlord, watchful in a corner of that furnace, turn lemon-yellow, or pale luminous green.” (Vangoghletters.org,