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 all this in an atmosphere like a devil’s furnace of pale sulphur. (Van Gogh: 534)
At first glance, the Night Café appears to be lively and inviting, but Van Gogh tells us that the café “is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad or commit a crime” (Van Gogh). The ruinous nature of the café follows directly in line with Van Gogh’s description of it as a “devil’s furnace” (Van Gogh) in which four blazing lamps hang like suns from the ceiling as they cast a fiery glow about the café’s milieu bathing the café in a powerful wash of yellow-green light. The light seems to consume the café as it stains the floor and the bar in the café yellow-green as well, consequently the color of absinthe—“a popular liquor in the nineteenth century” (Dees). The artificial yellow-green that consumes the café and Van Gogh’s description of the café as a “devil’s furnace” suggest a metaphorical image in which one could burn up (“ruin oneself, go mad or commit a crime”). The café’s shady-looking inhabitants suggest a more menacing habitat. The artificial yellow-green light in the painting illuminates the true nature of the café’s denizens—worn out absinthe drinkers, slumped over café tables, drowning their troubles in La Fée Verte, the green fairy (absinthe).