Table de café avec absinthe

Van Gogh painted this in Paris in the early months of 1887, while he was living with his brother Theo and soaking up the lighter palette of the Impressionists after his dark Dutch years. It is a quiet corner of a cafe: a glass of absinthe and a water carafe on a marble table, with the street just visible through the window behind. He thinned his paint almost to watercolour here, so the whole thing feels cool and washed out. Absinthe was the cheap, strong drink of the Paris cafes, close to 70 percent alcohol, usually cut with water from a carafe like this one. Van Gogh drank a good deal of it himself in these years.