Night Café at Arles (Madame Ginoux)

Paul Gauguin

Oil on jute

Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts

Painted in Arles in late 1888 during his celebrated but turbulent stay with Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin's Night Café at Arles depicts the interior of the Café de la Gare, owned by Joseph and Marie Ginoux. Madame Ginoux is prominently placed in the foreground, while café patrons and a billiard table animate the background, creating a composition that balances intimacy with social observation. Executed in Gauguin's characteristic Post-Impressionist manner, the work employs bold, contrasting colors—warm reds set against cooler tones—flattened forms, and expressive simplified contours that depart decisively from Impressionist naturalism. The painting stands as a significant document of the brief but historically momentous artistic exchange between Gauguin and Van Gogh, who painted the same café interior independently, each inflecting the scene with his own distinct sensibility.