He painted The Night Café in Arles in September 1888, inside the Café de la Gare, an all-night café run by Joseph-Michel and Marie Ginoux. He stayed up for three nights to paint it, sleeping during the day. In a letter to Theo, Van Gogh wrote that he wanted to show a place where someone could “ruin oneself, go mad or commit a crime.”

That is why the room feels so wrong. The red walls, green ceiling, yellow gas lamps, empty tables and billiards table are not just decor. They are the mood of the place. Too bright, too late, too restless.

This is nightlife without romance: a room for the lonely, the sleepless, and the people who have nowhere better to go.