A café in the town of Arles, in the south of France, glows under a gas lamp. People sit at tables on the terrace. Above the narrow street, the sky is a deep blue, scattered with big, bright stars.

Van Gogh painted it on the spot, at night, in September 1888. It's the first painting in which he used his famous starry sky — a year before The Starry Night.

He was delighted with it. In a letter to his sister, he wrote about painting a night picture without using black, only blues, violets and greens. Look closely and you'll see he was right: there's no black anywhere. The night is made entirely of colour.