The Starry Night

Painting information
Artist	-
Title	-

Main article: Vincent van Gogh

The Starry Night is the title given to one of the best known and most reproduced paintings by Dutch post-impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh. Since 1941 it has been in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Genesis

Already in autumn 1888, while Van Gogh was staying in Arles, he executed a painting commonly known as Starry Night over the Rhone. Almost a year later, mid June 1889, he announced a new study of a starry sky, and a bit later, he incorporated a pen drawing in set of a dozen done after recent paintings.

Pen drawing by Van Gogh, executed after the painting

Then, mid September 1889, following a heavy crisis which lasted from mid July to the last days of August, he thought to include this Study of the Night in the next batch of works to be send to his brother Theo in Paris. But in order to reduce the shipping costs, he had to take off three of his studies above-mentioned - Poppies - Night Effect - Moonrise; these three went to Paris with the shipment to follow. As Theo did not immediately rapport its arrival, Vincent inquired again., and finally received Theo's commentary on his recent work.

Subject matter

This composition compiles various parts and pieces to be seen from the neighborhood of the asylum in Saint-Rémy. The center part shows the village of Saint-Rémy, in a view from the asylum towards North. The Alpilles far to the right fit to this view, but there is little rapport of the actual scene with the intermediary hills which seem to be derived from a different part of the surroundings, south of the asylum. And to add a tree into a composition - here the top of a cypres, on the left - really should not have been a problem for Van Gogh, who already in Arles, in his Starry Night over the Rhone, had pushed Ursus major from the North to the South.

Recent Commentaries

Sketch of the Whirlpool Galaxy by Lord Rosse in 1845

• As pointed out by Simon Singh in his book Big Bang, the painting has striking similarites to the Whirlpool Galaxy. The shown sketch was made 44 years before van Gogh's painting.
• The sky of Starry Night also resembles Katsushika Hokusai's woodcut "The Great Wave of Kanagawa." Some believe that Van Gogh, as well as other Post-Impressionist artists, got ideas for their works from the Asian woodcuts.

Aims and Ends

Van Gogh was not so happy with this painting, considering it a study, not a definitive painting. In a letter to Theo from Saint-Rémy he wrote:

The first four canvases are studies without the effect of a whole that the others have . . . The olives with white clouds and background of mountains, also the moonrise and the night effect, these are exaggerations from the point of view of arrangement, their lines are warped as that of old wood.

Later in this letter, Vincent referred once more to the painting:

In all this batch I think nothing at all good save the field of wheat, the mountain, the orchard, the olives with the blue hills and the portrait and the entrance to the Quarry, and the rest says nothing to me, because it lacks individual intention and feeling in the lines. Where these lines are close and deliberate it begins to be a picture, even if it is exaggerated. That is a little what Bernard and Gauguin feel, they do not ask the correct shape of a tree at all, but they insist absolutely that one can say if the shape is round or square - and my word, they are right, exasperated as they are by certain people's photographic and empty perfection. Certainly they will not ask the correct tone of the mountains, but they will say: In the Name of God, the mountains were blue, were they? Then chuck on some blue and don't go telling me that it was a blue rather like this or that, it was blue, wasn't it? Good - make them blue and it's enough! Gauguin is sometimes like a genius when he explains this, but as for the genius Gauguin has, he is very timid about showing it, and it is touching the way he likes to say something really useful to the young. How strange he is all the same.

Legacy

The painting was the inspiration for Don McLean's song, Vincent, which is also known by its opening words, Starry, Starry Night and for French composer Henri Dutilleux's orchestral work "Timbres, Espace, Mouvement".

Resources

References

Boime, Albert: Vincent van Gogh: Starry Night. A history of matter, a matter of history (also available on CD-ROM: ISBN 3-634-23015-0 (German version))

Links

• Lyrics to Don McLean's "Vincent" aka "Starry, Starry Night".
• Multimedia study of van Gogh, McLean and Sexton