The Starry Night
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What is The Starry Night?
The Starry Night, one of Vincent van Gogh's most celebrated works, is a moderately abstract landscape painting of an expressive night sky over a hillside village. He painted it in 1889 during his 12-month stay at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France.
Confined to the asylum, Van Gogh painted the scene from memory, imagination, and possibly drawings, using the view from his barred bedroom window as inspiration. The oil-on-canvas painting showcases a vibrant night sky filled with swirling blues, a radiant crescent moon, and stars depicted as glowing orbs. Dominated by the animated sky, the painting also features towering cypress trees and a tranquil village in the distance. Although he experimented with weather and light, Van Gogh viewed the finished Starry Night as a failure because he favored working from observation.
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Who painted The Starry Night?
The Starry Night was painted by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh in 1889 during his stay at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France. He observed the night sky from his barred bedroom window. Because van Gogh was not allowed to paint in his bedroom, he rendered the scene from memory, imagination, and possibly drawings. As an artist who preferred working from observation, Van Gogh regarded the finished Starry Night as a failure. He applied the paint directly from the tube onto the canvas, creating thick impasto and intense hues.
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When and where was The Starry Night created?
The Starry Night, one of Vincent van Gogh's most celebrated works, is a moderately abstract landscape painting of an expressive night sky over a small hillside village. Van Gogh painted The Starry Night in 1889 during his 12-month stay at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France. He observed the night sky from his barred bedroom window. Because he was not allowed to paint in his bedroom, he painted the scene from memory, imagination, and possibly drawings.
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What does The Starry Night show or depict?
The Starry Night, painted by Vincent van Gogh in 1889, depicts an expressive, moderately abstract night sky filled with swirling blues, a yellow crescent moon, and radiating stars over a small hillside village. In the foreground, cypress trees reach up, and in the distance, a structured village sits peacefully. Created from memory at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, van Gogh used thick impasto and intense colors, applying paint directly to the canvas.
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Why is The Starry Night considered an important artwork?
The Starry Night, painted by Vincent van Gogh in 1889 during his stay at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, is celebrated for its unique and enduring qualities. The painting is a moderately abstract landscape of an expressive night sky over a small hillside village. Though Van Gogh regarded the finished Starry Night as a failure, since 1941, when the Museum of Modern Art in New York City purchased it, the painting has become one of the most recognized works in art history. Van Gogh's artistic career was brief, comprising only 10 years, but he left more than 800 paintings and 700 to 850 drawings to his brother.
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How did Vincent van Gogh's emotions and style influence The Starry Night?
The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh was painted in 1889 during his stay at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in France, after a breakdown where he harmed his own ear. During his time in the asylum, Van Gogh experienced alternating periods of high productivity and deep despair.
Confined to the asylum, Van Gogh painted from memory, imagination, and possibly drawings, using the view from his barred bedroom window as inspiration. He employed an expressive style developed in Paris, applying thick impasto and intense hues directly to the canvas. Despite his experimentation and emotional investment, Van Gogh considered The Starry Night a failure, feeling it favored style over substance.
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The Starry Night, a moderately abstract landscape painting (1889) of an expressive night sky over a small hillside village, one of Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh’s most celebrated works.
Description
The oil-on-canvas painting is dominated by a night sky roiling with chromatic blue swirls, a glowing yellow crescent moon, and stars rendered as radiating orbs. One or two cypress trees, often described as flame-like, tower over the foreground to the left, their dark branches curling and swaying to the movement of the sky that they partly obscure. Amid all this animation, a structured village sits in the distance on the lower right of the canvas. Straight controlled lines make up the small cottages and the slender steeple of a church, which rises as a beacon against rolling blue hills. The glowing yellow squares of the houses suggest the welcoming lights of peaceful homes, creating a calm corner amid the painting’s turbulence.
History
Van Gogh painted The Starry Night during his 12-month stay at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, several months after suffering a breakdown in which he severed a part of his own ear with a razor. While at the asylum, he painted during bursts of productivity that alternated with moods of despair. As an artist who preferred working from observation, van Gogh was limited to the subjects that surrounded him—his own likeness, views outside his studio window, and the surrounding countryside that he could visit with a chaperone.
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Although van Gogh’s subjects were restricted, his style was not. He experimented with the depiction of various weather conditions and changing light, often painting the wheat fields nearby under a bright summer sun or dark storm clouds. Van Gogh was also particularly preoccupied by the challenges of painting a night landscape and wrote about it not only to his brother, Theo, but to a fellow painter, Émile Bernard, and to his sister, Willemien. In a letter addressed to the latter, he alleged that night was more colorful than day and that stars were more than simple white dots on black, instead appearing yellow, pink, or green. By the time van Gogh arrived at Saint-Rémy, he had already painted a few night scenes, including Starry Night (Rhône) (1888). In that work, stars appear in bursts of yellow against a blue-black sky and compete with both the glowing gas lamps below and their reflection in the Rhône River.
At the asylum, van Gogh observed the night sky from his barred bedroom window and wrote a letter to Theo describing a magnificent view of the morning star very early one morning in the summer of 1889. Because he was not allowed to paint in his bedroom, he painted the scene from memory or possibly drawings and used his imagination for the small village that did not actually exist. Employing the expressive style he had developed during his stay in Paris in 1886–88, he applied the paint directly from the tube onto the canvas, creating thick impasto and intense hues. Ambivalent about working from his imagination, van Gogh eventually regarded the finished Starry Night as a failure, and Theo frankly indicated that the painting favored style over substance.
Legacy
The painting was one of van Gogh’s late works, as he committed suicide the following year. His artistic career was brief, comprising only 10 years, but it was very productive. He left more than 800 paintings and 700 to 850 drawings to his brother. When the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City purchased The Starry Night from a private collector in 1941, it was not well known, but it has since become one of van Gogh’s most famous, if not one of the most recognized, works in the art history canon.
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