VAN GOGH—USING COLOR TO EXPRESS THE POWERS OF DARKNESS. I posted here on how Van Gogh’s letters show his love of colors and how he chose his palette for each painting (” a painter does well if he starts from the colours on his palette instead of starting from the colours in nature….â€) Alex Danchev in a review in the times Literary Supplement (March 23) of a new biography of Van Gogh calls attention to a letter by Van Gogh about his choice of palette in the painting “Night Cafe in Arles”. The letter is here (at the wonderful site devoted to Van Gogh’s letters), along with reproductions of two versions of the painting with dramatically different color schemes.
In the letter, Van Gogh says: “In my picture of the “Night Café†I have tried to express the idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad or commit a crime. So I have tried to express, as it were, the powers of darkness in a low public house, by soft Louis XV green and malachite, contrasting with yellow-green and harsh blue-greens, and all this in an atmosphere like a devil’s furnace, of pale sulphur.”
The alternative version is dominated by a bright lemony yellow.