The Night Café Cross Stitch Pattern

Description

The Night Café cross stitch pattern is a replica of the famous Van Gogh painting Le Café de Nuit (1888). The painting is another example of Van Gogh’s belief that night is much more alive and richly coloured than day. His Night Café was gifted to the Yale University Art Gallery in 1903 and can usually be found on display among the European masters.

The Project

This project is a full coverage cross stitch and is a full-size replica of the original painting. It measures 92.5cm x 72.9cm when stitched on 14 count Aida cloth (510 x 402 grid) and requires 227 different DMC colours. You’ll be completing 205,020 cross stitches, so it’s going to take quite a few rainy days.

I think you’ll be delighted at how closely the finished piece resembles the original painting including the clashy green ceiling, red walls, gold swirling lamps, and vase of pink flowers. You’ll also find (bottom right corner) Vincent’s artist insignia in the size of his original brushstrokes.

Due to the size and complexity of this cross stitch, I recommend using Pattern Keeper to manage this project. Just check your download pack for the extra chart I have specially formatted for the Pattern Keeper App.

The Painting

During 1888, with lodgings upstairs, Van Gogh stayed up all night for 3 days to paint a 24-hour cafe and “its prowling night-visitors”. He deliberately used clashing red, green, orange, and pink tones as well as thick swirling brush strokes to express his resentment at being overcharged for the accommodation. He considered the painting one of his ugliest, but 130 years later, we humbly disagree.

Here is an extract from a letter Van Gogh wrote to his brother in September 1888. He thanks Theo for sending him money and muses over his current artwork:

“I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green. The room is blood red and dark yellow with a green billiard table in the middle; there are four lemon-yellow lamps with a glow of orange and green. Everywhere there is a clash and contrast of the most alien reds and greens, in the figures of little sleeping hooligans, in the empty dreary room, in violet and blue. The blood-red and the yellow-green of the billiard table, for instance, contrast with the soft tender Louis XV green of the counter, on which there is a rose nosegay. The white clothes of the landlord, watchful in a corner of that furnace, turn lemon-yellow, or pale luminous green.”

Letter to Theo Van Gogh, 8 September 1888, Arles

The Artist

Vincent Van Gogh was a Dutch Post-impressionist painter who might just be the world’s most famous artist. His work is defined by his bright colours and thick, expressive brush strokes. You’ll find more than a few of your favourite VG paintings here in my store, keep calling back as you need a new project.