NIGHT CAFE by Bob Kessel after Van Gogh

“NIGHT CAFE” by Bob Kessel, based on Vincent Van Gogh’s painting, can be purchased as a signed and numbered limited edition original fine art print. Contact Bob Kessel for prices and availability.

The Night Café in the Place Lamartine in Arles is one of Vincent van Gogh’s best known paintings from his Arles period. The work depicts the interior of the Café de la Gare, an all night tavern owned by Joseph-Michel Ginoux and his wife Marie.

NIGHT CAFE by Vincent Van Gogh

Van Gogh often visited brothels and disreputable drinking establishments. The desolate setting of the Café de la Gare served as an inspiration for Van Gogh who wrote of the painting to his brother, Theo:

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.

Vincent Van Gogh, Letter 534, 9 September 1888

The subject matter conveys a sense of loneliness and desperation. The slouched drinkers and lone figure (the owner, Joseph-Michel Ginoux) behind the billiard table, along with the skewed perspective and stark colouring, create a jarring and disturbing work. Van Gogh himself compared the tone of the painting as delirium tremens in full swing (Letter 534).

As a general rule, Van Gogh only signed the works that he felt were the most well executed. In the lower right corner of this painting Van Gogh wrote “Vincent le café de nuit”.

Paul Gauguin, Van Gogh’s friend and fellow artist, would come to live with Vincent shortly after The Night Café was painted. In fact, Gauguin himself would paint his own version. The atmosphere of the two works is quite different. In Van Gogh’s version, one finds isolation and despair, while Gauguin’s is more lively with a focus on Madame Ginoux. Gauguin wrote to Emile Bernard about his painting: ” . . . a café that Vincent likes a lot and that I like less. At bottom it’s not my sort of thing and local low life doesn’t work for me. I like it well enough when others do it but it always makes me uneasy.”

NIGHT CAFE by Paul Gauguin

DIAMOND VAN GOGH BY GAUGUIN by Bob Kessel

“DIAMOND VAN GOGH BY GAUGUIN” by Bob Kessel, from the new art series “PAINTERS PAINTING PAINTERS”, can be purchased as a signed and numbered limited edition original fine art print. Contact Bob Kessel for prices and availability.

VAN GOGH PAINTING by Paul Gauguin

Gauguin’s arrival in Arles on October 23 1888 signaled the inauguration of the Studio of the South. The following two months, during which the artists lived, ate, and worked together, were marked by an intensity that van Gogh described as “excessively electric,” as they debated aesthetic influences and working methods and sought to refine and maintain their individual artistic identities. Van Gogh, who painted very rapidly, applying thick coats of pigment, preferred working from models or directly from nature.

Gauguin, on the other hand, counseled: “art is an abstraction; extract it from nature while dreaming in front of it,”

and preferred to work from memory, building up thin layers of color in a slow, methodical style.

Testing their theories, the two artists painted a number of identical motifs side by side. In the ancient Roman cemetery known as the Alyscamps, Van Gogh worked with characteristic speed, quickly producing what he called “a study of the whole avenue, entirely yellow.” Gauguin proceeded more deliberately, creating a more abstract composition featuring three Arlésiennes (women of Arles), whom he ironically referred to as “the three graces.” Later the artists produced similarly divergent results in their depictions of the proprietress of the local café: Van Gogh’s Night Café and Gauguin’s The Arlésienne (Madame Ginoux).

As winter approached, the two artists were increasingly confined to the tiny yellow house. Their aesthetic debates intensified and the tension of living and working together soon proved to be too great; Gauguin began to speak of returning to Paris. At the end of December, van Gogh, distraught, threatened Gauguin with a knife, then cut off part of his own ear. Gauguin fled, never to see van Gogh again.

2 TAHITIANS by Bob Kessel after Gauguin

“The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art’s audience.
Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.”
- Paul Gauguin

Bob Kessel has created an art series based on Paul Gauguin. The “GAUGUIN” series can be purchased as signed and numbered limited edition original fine art prints. Contact Bob Kessel for prices and availability.

DANIEL IN THE LION’S DEN by Bob Kessel after Peter Paul Rubens

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Bob Kessel has created an art series titled, “BIBLE”. It features pictures based on the works of famous artists throughout history like the picture “DANIEL IN THE LION’S DEN”  originally by Peter Paul Rubens, shown above and the picture “DOUBTING THOMAS” shown below based on a painting by Caravaggio. These pictures are available as signed and numbered limited edition fine art prints. Contact Bob Kessel for pricing and availability.

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DOUBTING THOMAS by Bob Kessel after Caravaggio

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Also known as Saint Thomas Putting his Finger on Christ’s Wound. Thomas is one of Jesus’ twelve apostles. When Jesus shows himself to his followers after his resurrection, Thomas refuses to believe that this man really is his master. He demands evidence. Jesus shows him the wound caused by a Roman soldier’s lance before his crucifixion. He invites Thomas to put his finger on it. Caravaggio shows that Thomas soon casts aside all doubt.

Almost identical copies of this painting and that of the Pilgrimage to Emmaus were found in a church in the French town of Loches, in 1999. After investigation, it was announced in 2006 that both works were authentic Caravaggios. Both contain the shield of arms of Philippe de Bethune, a friend of Caravaggio’s and French ambassador in Rome. Records show that Bethune acquired four paintings from the painter. Caravaggio often made several copies of his own paintings.

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DOUBTING THOMAS by Caravaggio

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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Italian painter with great influence both in Italy and abroad.

Caravaggio is particularly renowned for his use of chiaroscuro, a technique that uses light and dark to achieve a 3-D effect. Caravaggio breaks away from the tradition of symmetrical figures and detailed backgrounds. His figures do retain a traditional monumentality. His later work is less plastic.

Caravaggio takes his name from the village where he was born. He receives his first training in Milan, specializing in still-lives. Around 1592 he takes to Rome, the spiritual capital of the Italian peninsula, switching his subject matter to street-life and young boys.

In 1595 Caravaggio’s talent catches the eye of cardinal Francesco Del Monte, who subsequently becomes his first patron. Caravaggio’s three paintings on the life of St Matthew cause a sensation: never before has a saint, let alone an apostle, been shown like this. (calling, inspiration, martyrdom) After this succès fou, Caravaggio takes all his subjects from the New Testament.

Caravaggio’s life is as turbulent as his personality. He has many run-ins with the law and is arrested on several occasions. In 1606 a bet over a game of tennis leads to an argument, at which point Caravaggio draws his sword and kills his opponent. He flees to Naples, intending to take the long way home to Rome - where friends are lobbying for his rehabilitation - via Malta and Sicily. On his wanderings he produces several masterpieces, such as The Beheading of St John the Baptist, which he creates in Malta. He dies before reaching Rome, probably of pneumonia, in Porto Ercole. Several days after his death word arrives of papal absolution.

Caravaggio’s influence is widespread: outside Italy he inspires painters as diverse as Georges de La Tour and members of the Utrecht School, e.g. Gerrit van Honthorst – artists who in their turn are later to influence Rembrandt.