Café table with absinth

This 1887 Paris café still life at the Van Gogh Museum depicts an absinthe glass and carafe on a marble café table — a subject Degas had made famous with L'Absinthe in 1876, and one that carried the full weight of Parisian bohemian mythology. Van Gogh approached it without Degas's implied moral judgment: where Degas's painting suggested social collapse and isolation, Van Gogh's still life is purely observational — a glass of pale green liquid, transparent and luminous, on a white marble surface. He was interested in the technical problem of rendering transparency and cool diffuse light, and the absinthe glass gave him a contained object of exceptional optical complexity: the pale green colour, the way the carafe reflected the surrounding café, the marble's matte surface in contrast. The painting also documents his Parisian café life during the period when the Café du Tambourin and similar Montmartre establishments were his social world.

The pale green of the absinthe glass is rendered with transparent washes of colour, contrasting with the opaque white marble table. Short, varied brushstrokes describe the tabletop's hard surface. The background is kept thin and atmospheric, focusing attention on the precise observation of the glass and carafe.