Read at The Van Gogh House inside the museum · the same label the museum panel shows, from content/inception/museum-labels/van-gogh-section-5.html

One More Look

Two Friends, One Café

Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin lived together for nine weeks and painted the same café in Arles. Their two pictures show how the same room can become two very different ways of seeing.

Van Gogh's The Night Café, painted with clashing red and green and a sharply tilting floor.
Van Gogh — The Night Café · 1888 · Arles

Hot, dizzy, and tilted, lit in reds and greens that fight each other: a real room, painted the way it feels instead of the way it looks.

Gauguin's Night Café at Arles, a flatter and calmer vision of the same room.
Gauguin — Night Café at Arles · 1888 · Arles

Flatter, calmer — more like a dream you half remember. The very same café, seen through a different painter's eyes.