Vincent van Gogh - Café Table with Absinthe [1887]

Vincent van Gogh -

Café Table with Absinthe [1887]

Amsterdam VGM

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The portrait in the café

Toulouse-Lautrec was adept at choosing a setting that reflected the personality of his model.18 In the case of Van Gogh, it seems he found the café to be a fitting backdrop for his friend. The choice is not surprising considering that in Paris Van Gogh had developed a routine of hastening to a café at the end of his workday during the so-called heure verte, or ‘green hour’, to imbibe one or more glasses of absinthe. 19 Van Gogh himself confessed that when he left Paris for Arles in the winter of 1888 he was ‘almost an alcoholic’.20 Paul Signac (1863–1935) recalled that when he visited his friend in the south, ‘the absinthes and brandies would follow each other in quick succession.’21 During the period when Toulouse-Lautrec depicted him, Van Gogh also portrayed himself twice in a café with a glass of liquor

Vincent van Gogh Self-Portrait with a Glass, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

(fig. 1)

.22 He even devoted an entire canvas exclusively to his beloved green elixir, seen from the drinker’s perspective: Café Table with Absinthe (1887, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam).

 

catalogues.vangoghmuseum.com/contemporaries-of-van-gogh-1...

 

 

 

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