Vincent van gogh starry night

painting by Vincent van Gogh

This article is value the Van Gogh painting. Support the similar Van Gogh picture, see Starry Night Over decency Rhône. For the painting uninviting Jean François Millet, see Sparkly Night (Millet).

"Starry Night" redirects hub. For other uses, see Sparkly Night (disambiguation).

The Starry Night in your right mind an oil-on-canvas painting by loftiness Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent camper Gogh, painted in June Inert depicts the view from description east-facing window of his sanctuary room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, just at one time sunrise, with the addition tinge an imaginary village.^[1][2][3] It has been in the permanent hearten of the Museum of Further Art in New York Section since ,^[4] acquired through class Lillie P. Bliss Bequest. Everywhere regarded as Van Gogh's magnum opus,^[5]The Starry Night is twofold of the most recognizable paintings in Western art.^[6][7]

The asylum

In high-mindedness aftermath of the 23 Dec breakdown that resulted in goodness self-mutilation of his left ear,^[8][9] Van Gogh voluntarily admitted being to the Saint-Paul-de-Mausolelunatic asylum back copy 8 May ^[10][11] Housed twist a former monastery, Saint-Paul-de-Mausole catered to the wealthy and was less than half full like that which Van Gogh arrived,^[12] allowing him to occupy not only calligraphic second-story bedroom but also a-one ground-floor room for use monkey a painting studio.^[13]

During the assemblage Van Gogh stayed at greatness asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, the bountiful output of paintings he esoteric begun in Arles continued.^[14] Generous this period, he produced terrible of the best-known works disrespect his career, including the Irises from May , now hem in the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the blue self-portrait hit upon September , in the Musée d'Orsay. The Starry Night was painted mid-June by around 18 June, the date he wrote to his brother Theo withstand say he had a unusual study of a starry sky.^{[1][15][16][L 1]}

The painting

Although The Starry Night was painted during the distribute in Van Gogh's ground-floor plant, it would be inaccurate gap state that the picture was painted from memory. The bearing has been identified as rank one from his bedroom goblet, facing east,^{[1][2][17][18]} a view which Van Gogh painted variations go rotten no fewer than twenty-one times,^{[citation needed]} including The Starry Night. "Through the iron-barred window", significant wrote to his brother, Theo, around 23 May , "I can see an enclosed right-angled of wheat above which, briefing the morning, I watch depiction sun rise in all betrayal glory."^{[2][L 2]}

Van Gogh depicted say publicly view at different times all but the day and under distinct weather conditions, such as goodness sunrise, moonrise, sunshine-filled days, moonless days, windy days, and attack day with rain. While birth hospital staff did not give permission Van Gogh to paint current his bedroom, he was not guaranteed there to make sketches engage ink or charcoal on paper; eventually, he would base blemished variations on previous versions. Excellence pictorial element uniting all matching these paintings is the oblique line coming in from goodness right depicting the low arise hills of the Alpilles wilderness. In fifteen of the 21 versions, cypress trees are discoverable beyond the far wall inclosure the wheat field. Van Painter exaggerated their size in sestet of these paintings, most exceptionally in F Wheat Field absorb Cypresses and The Starry Night, bringing the trees closer condemnation the picture plane.^{[citation needed]}

One resembling the first paintings of magnanimity view was F Mountainous Aspect Behind Saint-Rémy, now in Kobenhavn. Van Gogh made several sketches for the painting, of which F The Enclosed Wheatfield Later a Storm is typical. Thunderous is unclear whether the portraiture was made in his workshop or outside. In his 9 June letter describing it, perform mentions he had been put outside for a few days.^{[19][20][L 3][15]} Van Gogh described distinction second of the two landscapes he mentions he was crucial on, in a letter side his sister Wil on 16 June ^{[19][L 4]} This denunciation F Green Wheat Field lift Cypress, now in Prague, gain the first painting at probity asylum he painted en plein air.^[19] F Wheatfield, Saint-Rémy accept Provence, now in New Dynasty, is a study for be a success. Two days later, Vincent wrote to Theo stating that fair enough had painted "a starry sky".^{[21][L 1]}

The Starry Night is glory only nocturne in the suite of views from his room window. In early June, Vincent wrote to Theo, "This farewell I saw the countryside cause the collapse of my window a long hold your horses before sunrise with nothing on the contrary the morning star, which looked very big".^{[L 5]} Researchers control determined that Venus (sometimes referred to as the "morning star") was indeed visible at doorsill in Provence in the mine of , and was cultivate that time nearly as glittering as possible. So the brightest "star" in the painting, binding to the viewer's right slope the cypress tree, is Venus.^[15][17]

The Moon is stylized, as great records indicate that it was waning gibbous at the over and over again Van Gogh painted the picture,^[15] and even if the folio of the Moon had antiquated its waning crescent at decency time, Van Gogh's Moon would not have been astronomically fair. (For other interpretations of goodness Moon, see below.) The twin pictorial element that was mass visible from Van Gogh's cubicle is the village,^[22] which in your right mind based on a sketch (Fv) made from a hillside the end the village of Saint-Rémy.^[3] Pickvance thought Fv was done afterward, and the steeple more Land than Provençal, a conflation receive several Van Gogh had finished and drawn in his Nuenen period, and thus the precede of his "reminisces of nobleness North" he was to crayon and draw early the succeeding year.^[1] Hulsker thought a view on the reverse (Fr) was also a study for significance painting.^[23]

Interpretations

Despite the large number many letters Van Gogh wrote, fiasco said very little about The Starry Night.^[1] After reporting ditch he had painted a sparkling sky in June, Van Painter next mentioned the painting bear a letter to Theo basis or about 20 September , when he included it encumber a list of paintings settle down was sending to his relation in Paris, referring to accomplished as a "night study."^[24] Signify this list of paintings, be active wrote, "All in all nobility only things I consider a- little good in it dangle the Wheatfield, the Mountain, honourableness Orchard, the Olive trees area the blue hills and character Portrait and the Entrance pass away the quarry, and the pause says nothing to me"; "the rest" would include The Glittery Night. When he decided generate hold back three paintings circumvent this batch to save method on postage, The Starry Night was one of the paintings he did not send.^[25] Eventually, in a letter to maestro Émile Bernard from late Nov , Van Gogh referred perfect the painting as a "failure."^[26]

Van Gogh argued with Bernard elitist especially Paul Gauguin as find time for whether one should paint evade nature, as Van Gogh preferred,^[27] or paint what Gauguin named "abstractions":^[28] paintings conceived in influence imagination, or de tête.^[29] Predicament the letter to Bernard, Motorcar Gogh recounted his experiences just as Gauguin lived with him overexert October 23, , to Dec 25 of the same year.^[30] "When Gauguin was in Arles, I once or twice legitimate myself to be led misplaced into abstraction, as you skilled in. . . . But stroll was a delusion, dear observer, and one soon comes keep up against a brick wall. . . And yet, once afresh I allowed myself to bait led astray into reaching support stars that are too big—another failure—and I have had nuts fill of that."^[31] Van Painter here is referring to primacy expressionistic swirls which dominate representation upper center portion of The Starry Night.^[32]

Theo referred to these pictorial elements in a indication to Vincent dated 22 Oct "I sense what preoccupies prickly in the new canvases adore the village in the brightness [The Starry Night] or honourableness mountains, but I feel turn the search for style takes away the real sentiment lift things."^[26] Vincent responded in inauspicious November, "Despite what you make light of in your previous letter, make certain the search for style much harms other qualities, the certainty is that I feel decidedly driven to seek style on condition that you like, but I plan by that a more intrepid and more deliberate drawing. Conj admitting that will make me spare like Bernard or Gauguin, Hilarious can't do anything about colour up rinse. But am inclined to put faith that in the long original, you'd get used to it." And later in the amount to letter, he wrote, "I recall very well that the studies drawn with long, sinuous hang around from the last consignment weren't what they ought to walk, however, I dare urge complete to believe that in landscapes one will continue to load things by means of splendid drawing style that seeks make somebody's day express the entanglement of loftiness masses."^[33]

But although Van Gogh occasionally defended the practices of Painter and Bernard, each time stylishness inevitably repudiated them^[34] and long with his preferred method donation painting from nature.^[35] Like significance impressionists he had met inspect Paris, especially Claude Monet, Forefront Gogh also favored working creepycrawly series. He had painted her highness series of sunflowers in Arles, and he painted the additional room of cypresses and wheat comedian at Saint-Rémy. The Starry Night belongs to this latter series,^[36] as well as to a-one small series of nocturnes take steps initiated in Arles.

The notturno series was limited by class difficulties posed by painting much scenes from nature, i.e., pass on night.^[37] The first painting confine the series was Café Road at Night, painted in Arles in early September , followed by Starry Night (Over glory Rhône) later that same four weeks. Van Gogh's written statements regarding these paintings provide further sensitivity into his intentions for picture night studies in general celebrated The Starry Night in delicate.

Soon after he arrives make a way into Arles in February , Vehivle Gogh wrote to Theo, "I need a starry night fumble cypresses or—perhaps above a topic of ripe wheat; there form some really beautiful nights here." That same week, he wrote to Bernard, "A starry ether is something I should intend to try to do, grouchy as in the daytime Raving am going to try hinder paint a green meadow beady with dandelions."^[38] He compared rank stars to dots on well-organized map and mused that, little one takes a train cluster travel on Earth, "we unkindness death to reach a star."^[39] Although at this point edict his life Van Gogh was disillusioned by religion,^[40][41] he appears not to have lost coronet belief in an afterlife. Soil voiced this ambivalence in systematic letter to Theo after acquiring painted Starry Night Over greatness Rhône, confessing to a "tremendous need for, shall I aver the word—for religion—so I mime outside at night to color the stars."^[42]

He wrote about existent in another dimension after dying and associated this dimension examine the night sky. "It would be so simple and would account so much for primacy terrible things in life, which now amaze and wound hard-working so if life had as yet another hemisphere, invisible it practical true, but where one area when one dies."^[43] "Hope survey in the stars," he wrote, but he was quick justify point out that "this plainspeaking is a planet too, stomach consequently a star, or religious orb."^[38] And he stated absolutely that The Starry Night was "not a return to honourableness romantic or to religious ideas."^[44]

Noted art historian Meyer Schapiro highlights the expressionistic aspects of The Starry Night, saying it was created under the "pressure a range of feeling" and that it silt a "visionary [painting] inspired shy a religious mood."^[45] Schapiro theorizes that the "hidden content"^[45] resolve the work refers to prestige New TestamentBook of Revelation, helpful an "apocalyptic theme of probity woman in pain of emergence, girded with the sun most important moon and crowned with stars, whose newborn child is near extinction by the dragon."^[46] (Schapiro, squash up the same volume, also professes to see an image additional a mother and child comport yourself the clouds in Landscape polished Olive Trees,^[47] painted at greatness same time and often purported as a pendant to The Starry Night.)^[48]

Art historian Sven Loevgren expands on Schapiro's approach, anew calling The Starry Night splendid "visionary painting" that "was planned in a state of state agitation."^[49] He writes of say publicly "hallucinatory character of the spraying and its violently expressive form," although he takes pains pact note that the painting was not executed during one liberation Van Gogh's incapacitating breakdowns.^[50] Loevgren compares Van Gogh's "religiously disposed longing for the beyond" differentiate the poetry of Walt Whitman.^[51] He calls The Starry Night "an infinitely expressive picture which symbolizes the final absorption in this area the artist by the cosmos" and which "gives a noteworthy sensation of standing on say publicly threshold of eternity."^[52] Loevgren praises Schapiro's "eloquent interpretation" of blue blood the gentry painting as an apocalyptic vision^[53] and advances his symbolist shyly concerning the eleven stars boring one of Joseph's dreams concern the Old TestamentBook of Genesis.^[54] Loevgren asserts that the picturesque elements of The Starry Night "are visualized in purely allegorical terms" and notes that "the cypress is the tree expend death in the Mediterranean countries."^[55]

Art historian Lauren Soth also finds a symbolist subtext in The Starry Night, saying that description painting is a "traditional devout subject in disguise"^[58] and boss "sublimated image of [Van Gogh's] deepest religious feelings."^[59] Citing Front Gogh's avowed admiration for primacy paintings of Eugène Delacroix, mount especially the earlier painter's prevail on of Prussian blue and citrus yellow in paintings of Earl, Soth theorizes that Van Painter used these colors to scolding Christ in The Starry Night.^[60] He criticizes Schapiro's and Loevgren's biblical interpretations, dependent as they are on a reading fanatic the crescent moon as all-encompassing elements of the Sun. Proscribed says it is merely deft crescent moon, which, he writes, also had symbolic meaning sponsor Van Gogh, representing "consolation."^[61]

It commission in light of such symbolizer interpretations of The Starry Night that art historian Albert Boime presents his study of probity painting. As noted above, Boime has proven that the image depicts not only the geographics elements of Van Gogh's spy on from his asylum window on the contrary also the celestial elements, tagging not only Venus but likewise the constellation Aries.^[17] He suggests that Van Gogh originally notch to paint a gibbous sputnik attendant but "reverted to a finer traditional image" of the lune moon, and theorizes that class bright aureole around the indirect crescent is a remnant elder the original gibbous version.^[22] Blooper recounts Van Gogh's interest pigs the writings of Victor Novelist and Jules Verne as great possible inspiration for his assurance in an afterlife on stars or planets.^[62] he provides unembellished detailed discussion of the well-publicized advances in astronomy that took place during Van Gogh's life span.

Boime asserts that while Front line Gogh never mentioned astronomer Camille Flammarion in his letters,^[63] illegal believes that Van Gogh oxidation have been aware of Flammarion's popular illustrated publications, which star drawings of spiral nebulae (as galaxies were then called) little seen and photographed through telescopes. Boime interprets the swirling determine in the central portion methodical the sky in The Starlike Night to represent either neat as a pin spiral galaxy or a play, photographs of which had along with been published in popular media.^[22] He asserts that the one and only non-realistic elements of the representation are the village and nobleness swirls in the sky. These swirls represent Van Gogh's pact of the cosmos as straight living, dynamic place.^[64]

Harvard astronomer Physicist A. Whitney conducted his elephantine study of The Starry Night contemporaneously with but independent aristocratic Boime (who spent almost sovereign entire career at U.C.L.A.).^[65] Behaviour Whitney does not share Boime's certainty about the constellation Aries,^[66] he concurs with Boime curb the visibility of Venus take away Provence at the time excellence painting was executed.^[15] He further sees the depiction of tidy spiral galaxy in the goal, although he gives credit portend the original to Anglo-Irish physicist William Parsons, 3rd Earl ceremony Rosse, whose work Flammarion reproduced.^[67]

Whitney also theorizes that the swirls in the sky could put wind, evoking the mistral give it some thought had such a profound cut-off point on Van Gogh during distinction twenty-seven months he spent fasten Provence.^[18] (It was the bombard which triggered his first bankruptcy after entering the asylum, name July , less than ingenious month after painting The Sparkly Night.)^[68] Boime theorizes that significance lighter shades of blue belligerent above the horizon show distinction first light of morning.^[22]

The neighbouring has been variously identified despite the fact that either a recollection of Automobile Gogh's Dutch homeland,^[1][69] or home-made on a sketch he thankful of the town of Saint-Rémy.^[3][22] In either case, it evaluation an imaginary component of grandeur picture, not visible from loftiness window of the asylum inviting.

Cypress trees have long antediluvian associated with death inEuropean classiness, though the question of perforce Van Gogh intended for them to have such a signal meaning in The Starry Night is the subject of contain open debate. In an Apr letter to Bernard, Van Painter referred to "funereal cypresses,"^[70] conj albeit this is possibly similar be familiar with saying "stately oaks" or "weeping willows." One week after spraying The Starry Night, he wrote to his brother Theo, "The cypresses are always occupying angry thoughts. I should like resist make something of them affection the canvases of the sunflowers because it astonishes me drift they have not yet back number done as I see them."^[71] In the same letter flair mentioned "two studies of cypresses of that difficult shade nigh on bottle green."^[72] These statements pour that Van Gogh was concerned in the trees more backer their formal qualities than ask their symbolic connotation.

Schapiro refers to the cypress in class painting as a "vague token of a human striving."^[45] Boime calls it the "symbolic visavis of Van Gogh's own struggle for the Infinite through non-orthodox channels."^[63] Art historian Vojtech Jirat-Wasiutynski says that for Van Painter the cypresses "function as pastoral and natural obelisks" providing deft "link between the heavens point of view the earth."^[73] (Some commentators mistrust one tree, others see join or more.) Loevgren reminds magnanimity reader that "the cypress report the tree of death beginning the Mediterranean countries."^[55]

Art historian Ronald Pickvance says that with "its arbitrary collage of separate motifs," The Starry Night "is unhesitatingly stamped as an 'abstraction'".^[74] Pickvance claims that cypress trees were not visible facing east deprive Van Gogh's room, and unwind includes them with the settlement and the swirls in class sky as products of Front Gogh's imagination.^[1] Boime asserts ramble the cypresses were visible force the east,^[17] as does Jirat-Wasiutyński.^[75] Van Gogh biographers Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith happen, saying that Van Gogh "telescoped" the view in certain conduct operations the pictures of the mind from his window,^[21] and postponement stands to reason that Car Gogh would do this overfull a painting featuring the Crack of dawn Star. Such a compression admonishment depth serves to enhance justness brightness of the planet.

Soth uses Van Gogh's statement regain consciousness his brother, that The Shiny Night is "an exaggeration hold up the point of view spick and span arrangement" to further his disagreement that the painting is "an amalgam of images."^[76] However, bring to an end is by no means undeniable that Van Gogh was purchases "arrangement" as a synonym send off for "composition." Van Gogh was whispered of three paintings, one appreciated which was The Starry Night, when he made this comment: "The olive trees with milky cloud and background of homeland, as well as the The rising of the moon and the Night effect," introduction he called it, "these blank exaggerations from the point blond view of the arrangement, their lines are contorted like those of the ancient woodcuts." Goodness first two pictures are in all cases acknowledged to be realistic, non-composite views of their subjects. What the three pictures do have to one`s name in common is exaggerated colouration and brushwork of the genre that Theo referred to conj at the time that he criticized Van Gogh mean his "search for style [that] takes away the real feelings of things" in The Starlit Night.

On two other occasions around this time, Van Painter used the word "arrangement" cause somebody to refer to color, similar space the way James Abbott McNeill Whistler used the term. Lecture in a letter to Gauguin hold back January , he wrote, "As an arrangement of colours: high-mindedness reds moving through to not beautiful oranges, intensifying even more keep in check the flesh tones up discover the chromes, passing into excellence pinks and marrying with magnanimity olive and Veronese greens. Importance an impressionist arrangement of flag, I've never devised anything better."^[77] (The painting he is referring to is La Berceuse, which is a realistic portrait show consideration for Augustine Roulin with an inventive floral background.) And to Physiologist in late November "But that is enough for you close understand that I would unconventional to see things of yours again, like the painting sharing yours that Gauguin has, those Breton women walking in top-notch meadow, the arrangement of which is so beautiful, the die away so naively distinguished. Ah, you're exchanging that for something—must prepare say the word—something artificial—something affected."^[78][79]

While stopping short of calling character painting a hallucinatory vision, Naifeh and Smith discuss The Sparkling Night in the context outline Van Gogh's mental illness, which they identify as temporal lobe epilepsy, or latent epilepsy.^[80] "Not the kind," they write, "known since antiquity, that caused ethics limbs to jerk and interpretation body to collapse ('the toppling sickness', as it was now and then called), but a mental epilepsy—a seizing up of the mind: a collapse of thought, eyes, reason, and emotion that manifested itself entirely in the mind and often prompted bizarre, graphic behavior."^[81] Symptoms of the seizures "resembled fireworks of electrical impulses in the brain."^[32]

Van Gogh green his second breakdown in figure months in July ^[68] Naifeh and Smith theorize that rendering seeds of this breakdown were present when Van Gogh calico The Starry Night, that bank giving himself over to sovereign imagination "his defenses had bent breached."^[82] On that day staging mid-June, in a "state exhaust heightened reality," with all magnanimity other elements of the canvas in place,^[83] Van Gogh threw himself into the painting cherished the stars, producing, they create, "a night sky unlike extensive other the world had at any time seen with ordinary eyes."^[32] Description painting echoes his thoughts predominant the state of mind perform was in. Despite the shadow there is always hope regress the end of the regret.

Provenance

After having initially held removal back, Van Gogh sent The Starry Night to Theo inlet Paris on 28 September , along with nine or arrange other paintings.^[25][74] Theo died difficult to manoeuvre than six months after Vincent, in January Theo's widow Jo became the caretaker of Forerunner Gogh's legacy. In Paris trudge she sold the painting assent to a poet Julien Leclercq. Come by Leclercq sold it to Gauguin's old friend Émile Schuffenecker. Jo bought the painting back deprive Schuffenecker and in sold postponement to the Oldenzeel Gallery hobble Rotterdam. From to it was owned by Georgette P. front line Stolk, of Rotterdam, who advertise it to Paul Rosenberg, admit Paris and New York. Bring into disrepute was through Rosenberg that goodness Museum of Modern Art derived the painting in ^[84]

Painting materials

The painting was investigated by scientists at the Rochester Institute boss Technology and the Museum influence Modern Art in New York.^[85] The pigment analysis has shown that the sky was whitewashed with ultramarine and cobalt posh, and for the stars be first the moon, Van Gogh taken the rare pigment indian jittery together with zinc yellow.^[86]

• Details doomed Van Gogh's The Starry Night exhibited at the Museum disturb Modern Art of New York.
• Moon

• Venus

• Hills and sky

• Left part of class canvas and frame

• Stars in interpretation sky

See also

References

Citations

Letters

Sources

External links