This is the first painting in which he used starry backgrounds; he went on to paint star-filled skies in "Starry Night Over the Rhône" (painted the same month), and the better known "The Starry Night" a year later. Van Gogh also painted a starlight background in "Portrait of Eugène Boch". Van Gogh mentioned the "Cafe Terrace" painting in a letter written to Eugène Boch on October 2, 1888, writing he had painted "a view of the café on place du Forum, where we used to go, "painted at night"" (emphasis van Gogh's).