Street Café, Arles

A pair of terracotta pots anchor the foreground of this French street scene, their warm orange breaking up the cool blues and purples that dominate the rest of the canvas. Peter Foyle sets us outside a café in Arles, the same southern French town where Van Gogh painted his famous night cafés more than a century earlier. The signs overhead read "Artisan Glacier" and "Salon de Thé," marking this as a spot for ice cream and tea, and a cluster of people stand and sit beneath the shade of large cream umbrellas.

Foyle works in loose, confident brushstrokes that leave the paint visible and the details suggested rather than spelled out. Faces are dabs of color, the pavement is a patchwork of lilac and grey, and the whole thing has the feel of a moment glimpsed in passing rather than a careful photograph. The choice of Arles is no accident, since the town has drawn painters for generations thanks to its strong Mediterranean light. Here that light bounces off the pale umbrellas and the stone street, giving the ordinary act of stopping for a cold drink on a warm afternoon a bit of glow.