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''The Starry Night'' ( nl, De sterrennacht) is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch
Post-Impressionist Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction ag ...
painter
Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2 ...
. Painted in June 1889, it depicts the view from the east-facing window of his
asylum Asylum may refer to: Types of asylum * Asylum (antiquity), places of refuge in ancient Greece and Rome * Benevolent Asylum, a 19th-century Australian institution for housing the destitute * Cities of Refuge, places of refuge in ancient Judea ...
room at
Saint-Rémy-de-Provence Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (; Provençal Occitan: ''Sant Romieg de Provença'' in classical and ''Sant Roumié de Prouvènço'' in Mistralian norms) is a commune in the Bouches-du-Rhône department, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Southern France. L ...
, just before sunrise, with the addition of an imaginary village. It has been in the permanent collection of the
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
in New York City since 1941, acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest. Widely regarded as Van Gogh's
magnum opus A masterpiece, ''magnum opus'' (), or ''chef-d’œuvre'' (; ; ) in modern use is a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or a work of outstanding creativity, ...
, ''The Starry Night'' is one of the most recognizable paintings in Western art.


The asylum

In the aftermath of the 23 December 1888 breakdown that resulted in the
self-mutilation Self-harm is intentional behavior that is considered harmful to oneself. This is most commonly regarded as direct injury of one's own skin tissues usually without a suicidal intention. Other terms such as cutting, self-injury and self-mutilatio ...
of his left ear, Van Gogh voluntarily admitted himself to the
Saint-Paul-de-Mausole Monastery of Saint-Paul de Mausole (french: monastère Saint-Paul-de-Mausole) is a former monastery in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Provence, France. Several rooms of the building have been converted into a museum to Vincent van Gogh, who stayed the ...
lunatic asylum The lunatic asylum (or insane asylum) was an early precursor of the modern psychiatric hospital. The fall of the lunatic asylum and its eventual replacement by modern psychiatric hospitals explains the rise of organized, institutional psychiatry ...
on 8 May 1889. Housed in a former monastery, Saint-Paul-de-Mausole catered to the wealthy and was less than half full when Van Gogh arrived, allowing him to occupy not only a second-story bedroom but also a ground-floor room for use as a painting studio. During the year Van Gogh stayed at the asylum in
Saint-Rémy-de-Provence Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (; Provençal Occitan: ''Sant Romieg de Provença'' in classical and ''Sant Roumié de Prouvènço'' in Mistralian norms) is a commune in the Bouches-du-Rhône department, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Southern France. L ...
, the prolific output of paintings he had begun in
Arles Arles (, , ; oc, label= Provençal, Arle ; Classical la, Arelate) is a coastal city and commune in the South of France, a subprefecture in the Bouches-du-Rhône department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, in the former province of ...
continued. During this period, he produced some of the best-known works of his career, including the ''Irises'' from May 1889, now in the
J. Paul Getty Museum The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. The Getty Center is located in the Brentwood, Los Angeles, Brentwood neighborhood ...
, and the blue
self-portrait A self-portrait is a representation of an artist that is drawn, painted, photographed, or sculpted by that artist. Although self-portraits have been made since the earliest times, it is not until the Early Renaissance in the mid-15th century tha ...
from September, 1889, in the
Musée d'Orsay The Musée d'Orsay ( , , ) ( en, Orsay Museum) is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art ...
. ''The Starry Night'' was painted mid-June by around 18 June, the date he wrote to his brother
Theo Theo is a given name and a hypocorism. Greek origin Many names beginning with the root "Theo-" derive from the Ancient Greek word ''theos'' (''θεός''), which means god, for example: *Feminine names: Thea, Theodora, Theodosia, Theophania, ...
to say he had a new study of a starry sky.


The painting

Although ''The Starry Night'' was painted during the day in Van Gogh's ground-floor studio, it would be inaccurate to state that the picture was painted from memory. The view has been identified as the one from his bedroom window, facing east, a view which Van Gogh painted variations of no fewer than twenty-one times, including ''The Starry Night''. "Through the iron-barred window," he wrote to his brother, Theo, around 23 May 1889, "I can see an enclosed square of wheat ... above which, in the morning, I watch the sun rise in all its glory." Van Gogh depicted the view at different times of the day and under various weather conditions, such as the sunrise, moonrise, sunshine-filled days, overcast days, windy days, and one day with rain. While the hospital staff did not allow Van Gogh to paint in his bedroom, he was able there to make sketches in ink or charcoal on paper; eventually, he would base newer variations on previous versions. The pictorial element uniting all of these paintings is the diagonal line coming in from the right depicting the low rolling hills of the
Alpilles The Chaîne des Alpilles is a small range of low mountains in Provence, southern France, located about south of Avignon. Geography The range is an extension of the much larger Luberon range. Although it is not high - some 498 m (1,634  ...
mountains. In fifteen of the twenty-one versions,
cypress Cypress is a common name for various coniferous trees or shrubs of northern temperate regions that belong to the family Cupressaceae. The word ''cypress'' is derived from Old French ''cipres'', which was imported from Latin ''cypressus'', the ...
trees are visible beyond the far wall enclosing the wheat field. Van Gogh exaggerated their size in six of these paintings, most notably in F717 ''
Wheat Field with Cypresses ''A Wheatfield with Cypresses'' is any of three similar 1889 oil paintings by Vincent van Gogh, as part of his wheat field series. All were exhibited at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole mental asylum at Saint-Rémy near Arles, France, where Van Gogh ...
'' and ''The Starry Night'', bringing the trees closer to the
picture plane In painting, photography, graphical perspective and descriptive geometry, a picture plane is an image plane located between the "eye point" (or '' oculus'') and the object being viewed and is usually coextensive to the material surface of the w ...
. One of the first paintings of the view was F611 '' Mountainous Landscape Behind Saint-Rémy'', now in Copenhagen. Van Gogh made a number of sketches for the painting, of which F1547 ''The Enclosed Wheatfield After a Storm'' is typical. It is unclear whether the painting was made in his studio or outside. In his 9 June letter describing it, he mentions he had been working outside for a few days. Van Gogh described the second of the two landscapes he mentions he was working on, in a letter to his sister
Wil Wil () is the capital of the ''Wahlkreis'' (constituency) of Wil in the canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Wil is the third largest city in the Canton of St. Gallen, after the city of St. Gallen and Rapperswil-Jona, a twin city that merged in ...
on 16 June 1889. This is F719 ''
Green Wheat Field with Cypress ''Green Wheat Field with Cypress'' (French: ''Champ de blé vert avec cyprès'') is an oil-on-canvas painting by Dutch Post-Impressionist Vincent van Gogh. It is held by the National Gallery Prague, displayed at the (Fair Trade Palace) in the di ...
'', now in Prague, and the first painting at the asylum he definitely painted ''
en plein air ''En plein air'' (; French for 'outdoors'), or ''plein air'' painting, is the act of painting outdoors. This method contrasts with studio painting or academic rules that might create a predetermined look. The theory of 'En plein air' painting ...
''. F1548 ''Wheatfield, Saint-Rémy de Provence'', now in New York, is a study for it. Two days later, Vincent wrote to Theo stating that he had painted "a starry sky". ''The Starry Night'' is the only
nocturne A nocturne is a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night. History The term ''nocturne'' (from French '' nocturne'' 'of the night') was first applied to musical pieces in the 18th century, when it indicated an ensembl ...
in the series of views from his bedroom window. In early June, Vincent wrote to Theo, "This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big". Researchers have determined that
Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never fa ...
(sometimes referred to as the "morning star") was indeed visible at dawn in Provence in the spring of 1889, and was at that time nearly as bright as possible. So the brightest "star" in the painting, just to the viewer's right of the cypress tree, is actually Venus. The Moon is stylized, as astronomical records indicate that it actually was waning
gibbous Concerning the lunar month of ~29.53 days as viewed from Earth, the lunar phase or Moon phase is the shape of the Moon's directly sunlit portion, which can be expressed quantitatively using areas or angles, or described qualitatively using the t ...
at the time Van Gogh painted the picture, and even if the phase of the Moon had been its waning crescent at the time, Van Gogh's Moon would not have been astronomically correct. (For other interpretations of the Moon, see below.) The one pictorial element that was definitely not visible from Van Gogh's cell is the village, which is based on a sketch (F1541v) made from a hillside above the village of Saint-Rémy. Pickvance thought F1541v was done later, and the steeple more Dutch than Provençal, a conflation of several Van Gogh had painted and drawn in his Nuenen period, and thus the first of his " reminisces of the North" he was to paint and draw early the following year. Hulsker thought a landscape on the reverse (F1541r) was also a study for the painting. File:Vincent van Gogh - Wheatfield, Saint-Rémy de Provence - F1548 JH1726.jpg, F1548 ''Wheatfield, Saint-Rémy de Provence'',
Morgan Library & Museum The Morgan Library & Museum, formerly the Pierpont Morgan Library, is a museum and research library in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is situated at 225 Madison Avenue, between 36th Street to the south and 37th S ...
File:Vincent van Gogh - Green Field - Google Art Project.jpg, F719 ''
Green Wheat Field with Cypress ''Green Wheat Field with Cypress'' (French: ''Champ de blé vert avec cyprès'') is an oil-on-canvas painting by Dutch Post-Impressionist Vincent van Gogh. It is held by the National Gallery Prague, displayed at the (Fair Trade Palace) in the di ...
'',
National Gallery Prague The National Gallery Prague ( cz, Národní galerie Praha, NGP), formerly the National Gallery in Prague (), is a state-owned art gallery in Prague, which manages the largest collection of art in the Czech Republic and presents masterpieces of Cze ...
File:Vincent van Gogh - The Enclosed Wheatfield After a Storm F1547 JH1724.jpg, F1547 ''The Enclosed Wheatfield After a Storm'',
Van Gogh Museum The Van Gogh Museum () is a Dutch art museum dedicated to the works of Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries in the Museum Square in Amsterdam South, close to the Stedelijk Museum, the Rijksmuseum, and the Concertgebouw. The museum opened on ...
File:Vincent van Gogh - Landscape from Saint-Rémy - Google Art Project.jpg, F611 ''Mountainous Landscape Behind Saint-Rémy'',
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek ("ny" means "new" in Danish; "Glyptotek" comes from the Greek root ''glyphein'', to carve, and ''theke'', storing place), commonly known simply as Glyptoteket, is an art museum in Copenhagen, Denmark. The collection ...
File:Vincent van Gogh - Bird's-Eye View of the Village F1541v JH1729.jpg, F1541v ''Bird's-Eye View of the Village'',
Van Gogh Museum The Van Gogh Museum () is a Dutch art museum dedicated to the works of Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries in the Museum Square in Amsterdam South, close to the Stedelijk Museum, the Rijksmuseum, and the Concertgebouw. The museum opened on ...
File:Vincent van Gogh - Landscape with Cypresses F1541r JH 1730.jpg, F1541r ''Landscape with Cypresses'',
Van Gogh Museum The Van Gogh Museum () is a Dutch art museum dedicated to the works of Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries in the Museum Square in Amsterdam South, close to the Stedelijk Museum, the Rijksmuseum, and the Concertgebouw. The museum opened on ...


Interpretations

Despite the large number of letters Van Gogh wrote, he said very little about ''The Starry Night''. After reporting that he had painted a starry sky in June, Van Gogh next mentioned the painting in a letter to Theo on or about 20 September 1889, when he included it in a list of paintings he was sending to his brother in Paris, referring to it as a "night study." Of this list of paintings, he wrote, "All in all the only things I consider a little good in it are the Wheatfield, the Mountain, the Orchard, the Olive trees with the blue hills and the Portrait and the Entrance to the quarry, and the rest says nothing to me"; "the rest" would include ''The Starry Night''. When he decided to hold back three paintings from this batch in order to save money on postage, ''The Starry Night'' was one of the paintings he did not send.Van Gogh Letters Project, no. 806 Finally, in a letter to painter
Émile Bernard Émile Henri Bernard (28 April 1868 – 16 April 1941) was a French Post-Impressionist painter and writer, who had artistic friendships with Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Eugène Boch, and at a later time, Paul Cézanne. Most of his nota ...
from late November 1889, Van Gogh referred to the painting as a "failure." Van Gogh argued with Bernard and especially
Paul Gauguin Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (, ; ; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French Post-Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of colour and Synthetist style that were distinct fr ...
as to whether one should paint from nature, as Van Gogh preferred, or paint what Gauguin called "abstractions": paintings conceived in the imagination, or ''de tête''. In the letter to Bernard, Van Gogh recounted his experiences when Gauguin lived with him for nine weeks in the autumn and winter of 1888: "When Gauguin was in Arles, I once or twice allowed myself to be led astray into abstraction, as you know. . . . But that was delusion, dear friend, and one soon comes up against a brick wall. . . And yet, once again I allowed myself to be led astray into reaching for stars that are too big—another failure—and I have had my fill of that." Van Gogh here is referring to the expressionistic swirls which dominate the upper center portion of ''The Starry Night''. Theo referred to these pictorial elements in a letter to Vincent dated 22 October 1889: "I clearly sense what preoccupies you in the new canvases like the village in the moonlight 'The Starry Night''or the mountains, but I feel that the search for style takes away the real sentiment of things." Vincent responded in early November, "Despite what you say in your previous letter, that the search for style often harms other qualities, the fact is that I feel myself greatly driven to seek style, if you like, but I mean by that a more manly and more deliberate drawing. If that will make me more like Bernard or Gauguin, I can't do anything about it. But am inclined to believe that in the long run you'd get used to it." And later in the same letter, he wrote, "I know very well that the studies drawn with long, sinuous lines from the last consignment weren't what they ought to become, however I dare urge you to believe that in landscapes one will continue to mass things by means of a drawing style that seeks to express the entanglement of the masses." But although Van Gogh periodically defended the practices of Gauguin and Bernard, each time he inevitably repudiated them and continued with his preferred method of painting from nature. Like the impressionists he had met in Paris, especially
Claude Monet Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...
, Van Gogh also favored working in series. He had painted his series of
sunflowers ''Helianthus'' () is a genus comprising about 70 species of annual and perennial flowering plants in the daisy family Asteraceae commonly known as sunflowers. Except for three South American species, the species of ''Helianthus'' are native to N ...
in Arles, and he painted the series of cypresses and wheat fields at Saint-Rémy. ''The Starry Night'' belongs to this latter series, as well as to a small series of nocturnes he initiated in Arles. The nocturne series was limited by the difficulties posed by painting such scenes from nature, i.e., at night. The first painting in the series was ''
Café Terrace at Night ''Café Terrace at Night'' is an 1888 oil painting by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. It is also known as ''The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum'', and, when first exhibited in 1891, was entitled ''Coffeehouse, in the evening'' (''Café, le ...
'', painted in Arles in early September 1888, followed by '' Starry Night (Over the Rhône)'' later that same month. Van Gogh's written statements concerning these paintings provide further insight into his intentions for painting night studies in general and ''The Starry Night'' in particular. Soon after his arrival in Arles in February 1888, Van Gogh wrote to Theo, "I need a starry night with cypresses or—perhaps above a field of ripe wheat; there are some really beautiful nights here." That same week, he wrote to Bernard, "A starry sky is something I should like to try to do, just as in the daytime I am going to try to paint a green meadow spangled with dandelions." He compared the stars to dots on a map and mused that, as one takes a train to travel on Earth, "we take death to reach a star." Although at this point in his life Van Gogh was disillusioned by religion, he appears not to have lost his belief in an afterlife. He voiced this ambivalence in a letter to Theo after having painted ''Starry Night Over the Rhône'', confessing to a "tremendous need for, shall I say the word—for religion—so I go outside at night to paint the stars." He wrote about existing in another dimension after death and associated this dimension with the night sky. "It would be so simple and would account so much for the terrible things in life, which now amaze and wound us so, if life had yet another hemisphere, invisible it is true, but where one lands when one dies." "Hope is in the stars," he wrote, but he was quick to point out that "earth is a planet too, and consequently a star, or celestial orb." And he stated flatly that ''The Starry Night'' was "not a return to the romantic or to religious ideas." Noted art historian
Meyer Schapiro Meyer Schapiro (23 September 1904 – 3 March 1996) was a Lithuanian-born American art historian known for developing new art historical methodologies that incorporated an interdisciplinary approach to the study of works of art. An expert on earl ...
highlights the expressionistic aspects of ''The Starry Night'', saying it was created under the "pressure of feeling" and that it is a "visionary aintinginspired by a religious mood."Schapiro, p. 100 Schapiro theorizes that the "hidden content" of the work makes reference to the New Testament
book of Revelation The Book of Revelation is the final book of the New Testament (and consequently the final book of the Christian Bible). Its title is derived from the first word of the Koine Greek text: , meaning "unveiling" or "revelation". The Book of R ...
, revealing an "apocalyptic theme of the woman in pain of birth, girded with the sun and moon and crowned with stars, whose newborn child is threatened by the dragon." (Schapiro, in the same volume, also professes to see an image of a mother and child in the clouds in ''Landscape with Olive Trees'', painted at the same time and often regarded as a pendant to ''The Starry Night''.) Art historian Sven Loevgren expands on Schapiro's approach, again calling ''The Starry Night'' a "visionary painting" which "was conceived in a state of great agitation." He writes of the "hallucinatory character of the painting and its violently expressive form," although he takes pains to note that the painting was not executed during one of Van Gogh's incapacitating breakdowns. Loevgren compares Van Gogh's "religiously inclined longing for the beyond" to the poetry of
Walt Whitman Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among t ...
. He calls ''The Starry Night'' "an infinitely expressive picture which symbolizes the final absorption of the artist by the cosmos" and which "gives a never-to-be-forgotten sensation of standing on the threshold of eternity." Loevgren praises Schapiro's "eloquent interpretation" of the painting as an apocalyptic vision and advances his own symbolist theory with reference to the eleven stars in one of Joseph's dreams in the Old Testament book of Genesis. Loevgren asserts that the pictorial elements of ''The Starry Night'' "are visualized in purely symbolic terms" and notes that "the cypress is the tree of death in the Mediterranean countries." Art historian Lauren Soth also finds a symbolist subtext in ''The Starry Night'', saying that the painting is a "traditional religious subject in disguise" and a "sublimated image of an Gogh'sdeepest religious feelings." Citing Van Gogh's avowed admiration for the paintings of
Eugène Delacroix Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix ( , ; 26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863) was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school.Noon, Patrick, et al., ''Crossing the Channel: Britis ...
, and especially the earlier painter's use of Prussian blue and citron yellow in paintings of Christ, Soth theorizes that Van Gogh used these colors to represent Christ in ''The Starry Night''. He criticizes Schapiro's and Loevgren's biblical interpretations, dependent as they are on a reading of the crescent moon as incorporating elements of the Sun. He says it is merely a crescent moon, which, he writes, also had symbolic meaning for Van Gogh, representing "consolation." It is in light of such symbolist interpretations of ''The Starry Night'' that art historian
Albert Boime Albert Boime (March 17, 1933 – October 18, 2008), was an American art historian and author of more than 20 art history books and numerous academic articles. He was a professor of art history at the University of California, Los Angeles for thr ...
presents his study of the painting. As noted above, Boime has proven that the painting depicts not only the topographical elements of Van Gogh's view from his asylum window but also the celestial elements, identifying not only Venus but also the constellation Aries. He suggests that Van Gogh originally intended to paint a gibbous Moon but "reverted to a more traditional image" of the crescent moon, and theorizes that the bright aureole around the resulting crescent is a remnant of the original gibbous version. He recounts Van Gogh's interest in the writings of
Victor Hugo Victor-Marie Hugo (; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romantic writer and politician. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote in a variety of genres and forms. He is considered to be one of the great ...
and
Jules Verne Jules Gabriel Verne (;''Longman Pronunciation Dictionary''. ; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the ''Voyages extraor ...
as possible inspiration for his belief in an afterlife on stars or planets. And he provides a detailed discussion of the well-publicized advances in astronomy that took place during Van Gogh's lifetime. Boime asserts that while Van Gogh never mentioned astronomer
Camille Flammarion Nicolas Camille Flammarion FRAS (; 26 February 1842 – 3 June 1925) was a French astronomer and author. He was a prolific author of more than fifty titles, including popular science works about astronomy, several notable early science fiction ...
in his letters, he believes that Van Gogh must have been aware of Flammarion's popular illustrated publications, which included drawings of spiral nebulae (as galaxies were then called) as seen and photographed through telescopes. Boime interprets the swirling figure in the central portion of the sky in ''The Starry Night'' to represent either a spiral galaxy or a comet, photographs of which had also been published in popular media. He asserts that the only non-realistic elements of the painting are the village and the swirls in the sky. These swirls represent Van Gogh's understanding of the cosmos as a living, dynamic place. Harvard astronomer Charles A. Whitney conducted his own astronomical study of ''The Starry Night'' contemporaneously with but independent of Boime (who spent almost his entire career at U.C.L.A.). While Whitney does not share Boime's certainty with regard to the constellation Aries, he concurs with Boime on the visibility of Venus in Provence at the time the painting was executed. He also sees the depiction of a spiral galaxy in the sky, although he gives credit for the original to Anglo-Irish astronomer William Parsons,
Lord Rosse William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse (17 June 1800 – 31 October 1867), was an Irish astronomer, naturalist, and engineer. He was president of the Royal Society (UK), the most important association of naturalists in the world in the nineteenth ...
, whose work Flammarion reproduced. Whitney also theorizes that the swirls in the sky could represent wind, evoking the
mistral Mistral may refer to: * Mistral (wind) in southern France and Sardinia Automobiles * Maserati Mistral, a Maserati grand tourer produced from 1963 until 1970 * Nissan Mistral, or Terrano II, a Nissan 4×4 produced from 1993 until 2006 * Microp ...
that had such a profound effect on Van Gogh during the twenty-seven months he spent in Provence. (It was the mistral which triggered his first breakdown after entering the asylum, in July 1889, less than a month after painting ''The Starry Night''.) Boime theorizes that the lighter shades of blue just above the horizon show the first light of morning. The village has been variously identified as either a recollection of Van Gogh's Dutch homeland, or based on a sketch he made of the town of Saint-Rémy. In either case, it is an imaginary component of the picture, not visible from the window of the asylum bedroom. Cypress trees have long been associated with death in European culture, though the question of whether Van Gogh intended for them to have such a symbolic meaning in ''The Starry Night'' is the subject of an open debate. In an April 1888 letter to Bernard, Van Gogh referred to "funereal cypresses," though this is possibly similar to saying "stately oaks" or "weeping willows." One week after painting ''The Starry Night'', he wrote to his brother Theo, "The cypresses are always occupying my thoughts. I should like to make something of them like the canvases of the sunflowers, because it astonishes me that they have not yet been done as I see them." In the same letter he mentioned "two studies of cypresses of that difficult shade of bottle green." These statements suggest that Van Gogh was interested in the trees more for their formal qualities than for their symbolic connotation. Schapiro refers to the cypress in the painting as a "vague symbol of a human striving." Boime calls it the "symbolic counterpart of Van Gogh's own striving for the Infinite through non-orthodox channels." Art historian Vojtech Jirat-Wasiutynski says that for Van Gogh the cypresses "function as rustic and natural obelisks" providing a "link between the heavens and the earth." (Some commentators see one tree, others see two or more.) Loevgren reminds the reader that "the cypress is the tree of death in the Mediterranean countries." Art historian Ronald Pickvance says that with "its arbitrary collage of separate motifs," ''The Starry Night'' "is overtly stamped as an 'abstraction'." Pickvance claims that cypress trees were not visible facing east from Van Gogh's room, and he includes them with the village and the swirls in the sky as products of Van Gogh's imagination. Boime asserts that the cypresses ''were'' visible in the east, as does Jirat-Wasiutyński. Van Gogh biographers Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith concur, saying that Van Gogh "telescoped" the view in certain of the pictures of the view from his window, and it stands to reason that Van Gogh would do this in a painting featuring the Morning Star. Such a compression of depth serves to enhance the brightness of the planet. Soth uses Van Gogh's statement to his brother, that ''The Starry Night'' is "an exaggeration from the point of view of arrangement" to further his argument that the painting is "an amalgam of images." However, it is by no means certain that Van Gogh was using "arrangement" as a synonym for "composition." Van Gogh was, in fact, speaking of three paintings, one of which was ''The Starry Night'', when he made this comment: "The olive trees with white cloud and background of mountains, as well as the Moonrise and the Night effect," as he called it, "these are exaggerations from the point of view of the arrangement, their lines are contorted like those of the ancient woodcuts." The first two pictures are universally acknowledged to be realistic, non-composite views of their subjects. What the three pictures do have in common is exaggerated color and brushwork of the type that Theo referred to when he criticized Van Gogh for his "search for style
hat A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...
takes away the real sentiment of things" in ''The Starry Night''. On two other occasions around this time, Van Gogh used the word "arrangement" to refer to color, similar to the way
James Abbott McNeill Whistler James Abbott McNeill Whistler (; July 10, 1834July 17, 1903) was an American painter active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting and was a leading pr ...
used the term. In a letter to Gauguin in January 1889, he wrote, "As an arrangement of colours: the reds moving through to pure oranges, intensifying even more in the flesh tones up to the chromes, passing into the pinks and marrying with the olive and Veronese greens. As an impressionist arrangement of colours, I’ve never devised anything better." (The painting he is referring to is ''La Berceuse'', which is a realistic portrait of Augustine Roulin with an imaginative floral background.) And to Bernard in late November 1889: "But this is enough for you to understand that I would long to see things of yours again, like the painting of yours that Gauguin has, those Breton women walking in a meadow, the arrangement of which is so beautiful, the colour so naively distinguished. Ah, you’re exchanging that for something—must one say the word—something artificial—something affected." While stopping short of calling the painting a hallucinatory vision, Naifeh and Smith discuss ''The Starry Night'' in the context of Van Gogh's mental illness, which they identify as temporal lobe epilepsy, or latent epilepsy. "Not the kind," they write, "known since antiquity, that caused the limbs to jerk and the body to collapse ('the falling sickness', as it was sometimes called), but a ''mental'' epilepsy—a seizing up of the mind: a collapse of thought, perception, reason, and emotion that manifested itself entirely in the brain and often prompted bizarre, dramatic behavior." Symptoms of the seizures "resembled fireworks of electrical impulses in the brain." Van Gogh experienced his second breakdown in seven months in July 1889. Naifeh and Smith theorize that the seeds of this breakdown were present when Van Gogh painted ''The Starry Night'', that in giving himself over to his imagination "his defenses had been breached." On that day in mid-June, in a "state of heightened reality," with all the other elements of the painting in place, Van Gogh threw himself into the painting of the stars, producing, they write, "a night sky unlike any other the world had ever seen with ordinary eyes."


Provenance

After having initially held it back, Van Gogh sent ''The Starry Night'' to Theo in Paris on 28 September 1889, along with nine or ten other paintings. Theo died less than six months after Vincent, in January 1891. Theo's widow Jo became the caretaker of Van Gogh's legacy. In Paris in 1900 she sold the painting to poet Julien Leclercq. In 1901 Leclercq sold it to Gauguin's old friend
Émile Schuffenecker Claude-Émile Schuffenecker (8 December 1851 – 31 July 1934) was a French Post-Impressionist artist, painter, art teacher and art collector. A friend of Paul Gauguin and Odilon Redon, and one of the first collectors of works by Vincent van ...
. Jo bought the painting back from Schuffenecker and in 1906 sold it to the Oldenzeel Gallery in Rotterdam. From 1906 to 1938 it was owned by Georgette P. van Stolk, of Rotterdam, who sold it to Paul Rosenberg, of Paris and New York. It was through Rosenberg that the Museum of Modern Art acquired the painting in 1941.


Painting materials

The painting was investigated by the scientists at the
Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is a private university, private research university in the town of Henrietta, New York, Henrietta in the Rochester, New York, metropolitan area. The university offers undergraduate and graduate degree ...
and the
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
in New York. The
pigment A pigment is a colored material that is completely or nearly insoluble in water. In contrast, dyes are typically soluble, at least at some stage in their use. Generally dyes are often organic compounds whereas pigments are often inorganic compo ...
analysis has shown that the sky was painted with
ultramarine Ultramarine is a deep blue color pigment which was originally made by grinding lapis lazuli into a powder. The name comes from the Latin ''ultramarinus'', literally 'beyond the sea', because the pigment was imported into Europe from mines in Afgh ...
and
cobalt blue Cobalt blue is a blue pigment made by sintering cobalt(II) oxide with aluminum(III) oxide (alumina) at 1200 °C. Chemically, cobalt blue pigment is cobalt(II) oxide-aluminium oxide, or cobalt(II) aluminate, CoAl2O4. Cobalt blue is lighter ...
, and for the stars and the moon, Van Gogh employed the rare pigment
indian yellow Indian yellow is a complex pigment consisting primarily of euxanthic acid salts (magnesium euxanthate and calcium euxanthate), euxanthone and sulphonated euxanthone. It is also known as purree, snowshoe yellow, gaugoli, gogili, Hardwari peori, M ...
together with
zinc yellow Chromate conversion coating or alodine coating is a type of conversion coating used to passivate steel, aluminium, zinc, cadmium, copper, silver, titanium, magnesium, and tin alloys. The coating serves as a corrosion inhibitor, as a primer ...
.Van Gogh, ''The Starry Night'', illustrated pigment analysis, ColourLex Detail Nuit Etoilée Van Gogh.jpg, Moon Starry night Van Gogh detail 2.jpg, Venus Starry night Van Gogh detail hills.jpg, Hills and sky Starry night Van Gogh details left part of canevas.jpg, Left part of the canvas and frame The Starry night by Van Gogh, detail of the sky.jpg, Stars in the sky


See also

* Baldin Collection * "Vincent", 1971 song by
Don McLean Donald McLean III (born October 2, 1945) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He is best known for his 1971 hit song " American Pie", an eight-and-a-half-minute folk rock "cultural touchstone" about the loss of innocence of the early ...
written as a tribute to Vincent van Gogh * ''Timbres, espace, mouvement'': an orchestral work (1978) by
Henri Dutilleux Henri Paul Julien Dutilleux (; 22 January 1916 – 22 May 2013) was a French composer active mainly in the second half of the 20th century. His small body of published work, which garnered international acclaim, followed in the tradition of ...
inspired by the painting


References

;Citations ;Letters ;Sources * * * * * * * * * * *


External links

*
''The Starry Night''
a
Who is van Gogh''Van Gogh, paintings and drawings: a special loan exhibition''
a fully digitized exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries, which contains material on this painting (see index)
Aerial photo of monastery marking Vincent's bedroom
* Vincent van Gogh, ''The Starry Night'', ColourLex
"12 Most Famous Paintings in History", paintandpainting.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Starry Night, The 1889 paintings Paintings by Vincent van Gogh Paintings in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (New York City) Paintings of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence by Vincent van Gogh Churches in art Moon in art Paintings of Venus (planet)