Arles, September 1888. Van Gogh stays up three nights in a row to paint the interior of the Café de la Gare, an all-night establishment where drifters slept at the tables when they had nowhere else to go. He paints it in clashing reds and greens on purpose, writing to Theo that he tried to express the terrible passions of humanity, and the idea that a café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime.

The gas lamps radiate halos. The billiard table casts an uneasy shadow. The proprietor stands in white like a ghost at the edge of it all. It is one of the earliest paintings in which colour is used purely for psychology rather than description.