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Contents
The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh | An overview
The Starry Night is an abstract landscape painting by Vincent van Gogh, completed in 1889. It depicts the night sky over a village with stars swirling around, glowing and lighting up the scenery.
Date: 1889
Medium: Oil on canvas
Art style: Abstract, Post-Impressionist
Size: 73.7 x 92.1 cm
Displayed at: Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Starry Night at MoMA
About the painting
Location: Floor 2, 2 South, The Paul J. Sachs Galleries
The painting has multiple elements that complement each other, but the swirls of the night sky catch your eye first. The crescent moon and the stars have a yellow glow surrounding them (he loved using yellow in his paintings, especially in his later works). The cypress trees are at the forefront of the painting and tower over the landscape, while the hills roll over in the background. A peaceful village aglow with yellow lights and a church’s steeple rising above the rooftops complete the painting.
Method and background
Van Gogh painted The Starry Night by applying the paint directly from the tube onto the canvas, creating thick impasto and adding a rich, textured, intensity to the artwork. The landscape is the view from his room at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole monastery where he had admitted himself for a year, but the village portrayed is said to have been from his imagination. The bright, nearly-white star, which he referred to as the morning star in his letter to his brother Theo, is Venus.
Pigments and color composition
According to research and investigations led by MoMA and the Rochester Institute of Technology, the color composition of the painting included the following pigments:
Sky: Ultramarine blue and cobalt blue.
Moon and stars: Indian yellow with zinc yellow.
Cypress trees: Burnt umber, and possibly Prussian blue with either burnt umber or one of the yellow pigments.
Other pigments likely to have been used: Emerald green, lead white, cadmium yellow, yellow ochre.
Important dates
- May 8, 1889: Van Gogh admits himself into Saint-Paul-de-Mausole monastery in Saint-Rémy to aid his mental health recovery.
- Mid-June 1889: Start and completion of The Starry Night.
- September 1889: Van Gogh sends the painting to his brother, Theo, along with nine to ten other paintings.
- 1941: MoMA NYC acquires The Starry Night through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest (by exchange).
Van Gogh’s most notable works
Starry Night Over the Rhône (1888)
The painting shows Van Gogh’s fascination with colors and how important it was to him that he depicted them in his paintings. The reflection of the signature yellow lights on the river, the rich blues, and the atmosphere of the Arles river banks create an alluring and mysterious effect on the viewer.
The Bedroom (1888)
The Bedroom was painted when he lived in The Yellow House in Arles, but the original colors have discolored over time and changed from purple to blue (walls and doors). Van Gogh was very pleased with this painting and considered it to be one of his favorites.
Self-Portraits by Vincent van Gogh (1886-1889)
There are around 35 self-portraits of Van Gogh that he painted, showing him in different stages of his life. He chose to paint himself because he couldn’t afford models and decided to use himself as a subject instead. The series shows how he viewed himself and helped shape how the world sees him as an artist and individual.
The Starry Night (1889)
Starry Night was completed from start to finish in a matter of few days, from mid-June to 18th June 1889 approximately, and still stands to be one of the most famous paintings of all time. Inspired by the view of the night sky that Van Gogh saw from outside the window of the asylum he was admitted to, he made sketches and recreations and painted them in his style at his studio to fulfill his need to paint the starry night skies.
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Irises (1889)
Van Gogh painted the still-life study of the flowers while he was still at Saint-Rémy to understand color and contrast. He used the yellow background to make the purple irises stand out even more. Over time, the red pigment from the purple faded, and the irises turned blue.
Almond Blossom (1890)
Almond Blossom was a gift given to his brother Theo and his wife Jo to celebrate the birth of their child, Vincent Willem. The painting symbolized bloom, birth, and new life, a celebration of their new baby. The composition and elements are completely different from any other painting Van Gogh had done before. His interest in Japanese floral studies and search for serenity through the medium resulted in this piece. Vincent Willem went on to found the Van Gogh Museum later in his life.
Portrait of Dr. Gachet (1890)
The Portrait of Dr. Gachet is one of Van Gogh’s most revered portraits. Dr. Gachet is the man who took care of Van Gogh in his final days. There are two versions of the portrait, both painted in June 1890 at Auvers. The Doctor sits with his head leaning on his right arm in both paintings, but the difference is easily noticeable due to the difference in color and style.
Vincent van Gogh and his influence on the Post-Impressionist movement
While Impressionist artists were focused on bringing an essence of fleetingness in their paintings with light colors that would often blend into one another, creating a dreamy landscape, Post-Impressionists wanted to add more emotion and meaning to the work they were doing.
Van Gogh used expressive brush strokes and rich colors and added emotional depth to his paintings rather than simply displaying a version of reality. He wanted to leave his character, a touch of his identity, behind in this painting and show how he was feeling or what he was seeing to the viewers once he was done with the painting. That added a personal and symbolic meaning to his art that didn’t exist with Impressionist work.
