The Starry Night
The view from Van Gogh’s window at the asylum in Saint-Rémy, partly from memory. The sky swirls, the cypress flames and the village sleeps.
The brushstrokes follow the forms and create movement – the sky is painted as a living force.
In May 1889 Vincent van Gogh voluntarily admitted himself to the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. He had by then suffered several serious attacks of illness in Arles. At the asylum he was given a room overlooking an enclosed wheat field and the hills beyond, as well as an extra room to paint in. The Starry Night was painted in June 1889.
Van Gogh was not allowed to paint in his bedroom. He made sketches of the view and painted the picture in the studio room during the day. The night sky was thus painted partly from memory and imagination. The village at the bottom is not part of the view from his window, and the church spire is more reminiscent of Dutch than of Provençal churches. In a letter to his brother Theo he described seeing the landscape before sunrise, with the morning star looking very large. He painted the view from the asylum many times, at different times of day and in different weather.
The sky is full of swirling movement. The stars shine as yellow and white circles surrounded by haloes of light. On the right a crescent moon glows. Great spiral forms wind across the sky. The bright star near the horizon has often been identified as the planet Venus, which was visible at dawn at that time. The sky takes up most of the picture, and the landscape seems small beneath it.
In the left foreground a dark cypress rises like a flame against the sky. In Mediterranean countries cypresses were associated with death and cemeteries, but Van Gogh admired them for their shape and wrote that they were as beautiful as Egyptian obelisks. The little village lies peacefully beneath the sky with its lit windows.
The brushstrokes are clearly visible and follow the forms: in circles around the stars, in waves across the sky, upwards in the cypress. The colours are dominated by deep blue and yellow. The contrast between the movement of the sky and the stillness of the village is the heart of the picture. Van Gogh himself was unsure of the result and mentioned the picture only briefly, and rather critically, in his letters. The picture is painted in oil on canvas and measures about 74 by 92 centimetres.
Van Gogh died in July 1890 in Auvers-sur-Oise. The Starry Night remained with his family and was later sold. In 1941 it was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where it has hung ever since and is the museum’s best-known work.
The picture has become one of the most famous paintings in the world. It has been interpreted as an expression of Van Gogh’s state of mind, of his religious feeling and of his dream of eternity. Such interpretations should be made with caution. In 1971 the singer Don McLean wrote his well-known song Vincent, which opens with a reference to the picture. It has become a symbol of both artistic genius and mental illness.