The Starry Night, 1889
The Starry Night is arguably the most famous and recognizable of all of Vincent van Gogh’s images. The painting was made in June of 1889, shortly after the artist checked himself into the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Completed over the course of a couple insomnia-filled days and nights, the work offers a view beyond Van Gogh’s east-facing window: a cypress tree, an olive grove, rolling hills, the village and church as seen in the earliest morning hours when the sky is full of both darkness and light. All of this has been transformed and unified by the power of the artist’s imagination, vision, and memories. Vincent’s intensely personal response to the sky, seemingly bursting with stars, has a spiritual dimension that is unmistakable.
One of the most compelling aspects of The Starry Night is its thick, almost sculptural surface. Built up in pure, contrasting colors, it creates arabesques and multi-directional strokes that collide and undulate with a turbulent energy. Inspired by the giant cresting wave in a famous Japanese woodblock print by Hokusai, the swirling forms in the center of the sky draw us in with their palpable intensity, leaving each viewer to their own interpretation.
Long obsessed with capturing the experience of a starry night, the artist wanted to paint a nocturnal scene that might express the mystery and immensity of the sky, the inspiration of poets throughout time. In a letter to his brother Théo, Vincent touchingly writes, “Looking at the stars always make me dream… Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shiny dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?” With this painting, he had already begun to bring the stars within reach.