How was The Starry Night painted from observation and imagination?

Vincent van Gogh painted The Starry Night in 1889 while staying at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum. Although he was an artist who preferred working from direct observation, he faced a significant constraint: he was not permitted to paint inside his bedroom, where he observed the night sky through a barred window.12

Because he could not paint on-site, he rendered the scene using a combination of memory, imagination, and potentially preparatory drawings. Specifically, while the sky was inspired by his observations of the morning star and the night landscape, the small village depicted in the painting did not actually exist and was a product of his imagination.12

Van Gogh was personally ambivalent about this departure from his usual practice of painting from life, and he ultimately regarded the finished work as a failure. Despite his own assessment, the painting has since become one of the most celebrated works in the art history canon.12