09/12/2026
"The Starry Night" (1889) - Vincent Van Gogh ( 1853 - 1890)
One of Van Gogh's most celebrated works, we see a painting 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.
Van Gogh painted The Starry Night during his 12 month stay at the Saint Paul de Mausole asylum where he spent several months after suffering a breakdown in which he severed a part of his own ear with a razor.
Van Gogh’s subjects 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, stating in letters to his brother that "The night was more colorful than day and that stars were more than simple white dots on black, instead appearing yellow, pink, or green."
At the asylum, van Gogh observed the night sky from his barred bedroom window. However, he was not allowed to paint in his bedroom, which meant that he painted the scene from memory or possibly drawings and used his imagination for the small village that did not actually exist.
It's ironic that after he completed the piece, Van Gogh felt like it was one of his worst paintings.
