The Starry Night at MoMA

Woman viewing The Starry Night on 2nd floor of 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.

Tubes with art oil paint on a palette on a canvas

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.

View of the building of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, an old psychiatric hospital

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).

About Vincent van Gogh | The artist

Vincent van Gogh, born on March 30, 1853, in Zundert, Netherlands, is considered to be one of the most prolific artists of all time and one of the most celebrated artists in the Post-Impressionist movement. His works gained global recognition and popularity and were sold at record-breaking sums after his death in 1890. His art continues to move people and evoke emotions and remains a field of study, research, and fascination even today.

Van Gogh wrote a number of letters alongside his paintings, mainly to his brother Theo and his sister Will, which became a part of art exhibitions over time. The Dutch artist’s career spanned only a decade, from 1880 till his passing in 1890, but over those 10 years, he managed to amass a collection of over 2,000 oil paintings, charcoal, watercolor paintings, and sketches. His emotional anguish, mental instability, and search for spiritual knowledge and peace fueled his art. He found solace and inspiration in nature, landscapes, his surroundings, and celestial bodies.

His tumultuous life created a quintessential tortured artist myth that surrounds his work, adding another coat of mystery and intrigue to his already layered and thought-provoking art.

Van Gogh’s most notable works

Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night Over the Rhone (1888) famous landscape painting

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.

Van Gogh's "The Bedroom" painting at the MoMa

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.

Van Gogh's The Starry Night painting displayed at MoMa

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.

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.

The Post-Impressionist movement

The Post-Impressionist movement was a set of artists starting to branch out of Impressionism in the late 19th century and pursue different styles in different parts of the world as a result of the restrictions they felt they had in the Impressionist movement.
Important artists in the movement include Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, and Paul Cézanne.
They worked independently and not as a collective, deciding to practice their specialty in their own regions and locations.
Roger Fry coined the term “Post-Impressionist” in 1910, at his Manet and the Post-Impressionists exhibition at the Grafton Galleries in London.
Post-Impressionism eventually gave birth to other art movements such as Neo-Impressionism, Expressionism, and Fauvism.