The Starry Night

Vincent van Gogh

(Dutch, 18531890)
1889. Oil on canvas, 29 x 36 1/4" (73.7 x 92.1 cm)

Vincent van Gogh: Emotion, Vision, and A Singular Style

Mention Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 18531890) and one of the first things likely to
come to many peoples minds is the fact that he cut off his own ear. This stark act,
committed in 1888, marked the beginning of the depression that would plague him
until the end of his life. But to know van Gogh is to get past the caricature of the
tortured, misunderstood artist and to become acquainted instead with the
hardworking, deeply religious, and difficult man. Van Gogh found his place in art and
produced emotional, visually arresting paintings over the course of a career that
lasted only a decade.
Largely self-taught, van Gogh produced more than 2,000 oil paintings, watercolors,
drawings, and sketches, which became in demand only after his death. He also wrote
scores of letters, especially to his brother Theo, in which he worked out his thoughts
about art. Always continue walking a lot and loving nature, for thats the real way to
learn to understand art better and better, he wrote in 1874. Painters understand
nature and love it, and teach us to see.1

It was nature, and the people living closely to it, that first stirred van Goghs artistic
inclinations. In this he was not alone. Landscapes remained a popular subject in latenineteenth-century art. Driven in part by their dissatisfaction with the modern city,
many artists sought out places resembling earthly paradises, where they could observe
nature firsthand, feeding its psychological and spiritual resonances into their work.
Van Gogh was particularly taken with the peasants he saw working the countryside;
his early compositions featured portraits of Dutch peasants and rural landscapes,
rendered in dark, moody tones.
In 1886, van Gogh moved to Paris, where he encountered the works of the
Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists, and the Pointillist compositions of Georges
Seurat. Inspired by these artists harmonious matching of colors, shorter brushstrokes,
and liberal use of paint, he brightened his own palette and loosened his brushwork,
emphasizing the physical application of paint on the canvas. The style he developed
in Paris and carried through to the end of his life became known as PostImpressionism, a term encompassing works made by artists unified by their interest
in expressing their emotional and psychological responses to the world through bold
colors and expressive, often symbolic images. In a letter to his sister Willemien,
touching upon the mind and temperament of artists, van Gogh once wrote that he was
very sensitive to color and its particular language, its effects of complementaries,
contrasts, harmony.2
By 1888, van Gogh had returned to the French countryside, where he would remain
until his death. There, close once again to the peasants who had inspired him early on,
he concentrated on painting landscapes, portraits (of himself and others), domestic
interiors, and still lifes full of personal symbolism.
Observation and Imagination in The Starry Night (1889)
This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise,
with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big, wrote van Gogh to his
brother Theo, describing his inspiration for one of his best-known paintings, The
Starry Night (1889).3 The window to which he refers was in the Saint-Paul asylum in
Saint-Rmy, in southern France, where he sought respite from his emotional suffering
while continuing to make art.
This mid-scale, oil-on-canvas painting is dominated by a moon- and star-filled night
sky. It takes up three-quarters of the picture plane and appears turbulent, even
agitated, with intensely swirling patterns that seem to roll across its surface like
waves. It is pocked with bright orbsincluding the crescent moon to the far right, and
Venus, the morning star, to the left of centersurrounded by concentric circles of
radiant white and yellow light.
Beneath this expressive sky sits a hushed village of humble houses surrounding a
church, whose steeple rises sharply above the undulating blue-black mountains in the
background. A cypress tree sits at the foreground of this night scene. Flame-like, it
reaches almost to the top edge of the canvas, serving as a visual link between land and
sky. Considered symbolically, the cypress could be seen as a bridge between life, as
represented by the earth, and death, as represented by the sky, commonly associated
with heaven. Cypresses were also regarded as trees of the graveyard and mourning.

But the sight of the stars always makes me dream, van Gogh once wrote. Why, I
say to myself, should the spots of light in the firmament be less accessible to us than
the black spots on the map of France? Just as we take the train to go to Tarascon or
Rouen, we take death to go to a star.4
The Starry Night is based on van Goghs direct observations as well as his
imagination, memories, and emotions. The steeple of the church, for example,
resembles those common in his native Holland, not in France. The whirling forms in
the sky, on the other hand, match published astronomical observations of clouds of
dust and gas known as nebulae. At once balanced and expressive, the composition is
structured by his ordered placement of the cypress, steeple, and central nebulae, while
his countless short brushstrokes and thickly applied paint set its surface in roiling
motion. Such a combination of visual contrasts was generated by an artist who found
beauty and interest in the night, which, for him, was much more alive and richly
colored than the day.5

From left: Vincent van Gogh. Terrace of a Caf at Night (Place du Forum). c.
September 1888. Oil on canvas, 80.7 x 65.3 cm. Krller-Mller Museum; Caf Nuit,
Arles. Photo by Alex Roediger
July 29, 2015, is the 125th anniversary of Vincent van Goghs death. This past spring
I fulfilled one of my lifelong dreams by taking a trip to Europe to follow in Van
Goghs footsteps. As a teenager I checked out every library book about Van Gogh,
and eventually read the unabridged three-volume set of letters he wrote to his brother,
Theo. With so much time having passed, I was eager to see if anything from Van
Goghs time had survived. Could I stand where he did and still make out the fields he
painted, or would I be standing in the center of an unrecognizable suburb or, worse,
inside a shopping mall?
My girlfriend and I first traveled to the Netherlands, where Van Gogh was born and
lived for most of his life. In Amsterdam we went to the Van Gogh Museum and
viewed hundreds of his works, including many of his greatest paintings. We were
touched to learn that the collection and museum were created by his sister-in-law,
Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, and nephew, Vincent Willem van Gogh. We then headed

to Arles, in the south of France, where Van Gogh developed the rich color palette and
strong brushwork that made him famous.
It seemed little had changed in Arles since Van Goghs time, aside from the absent
yellow house he had lived in, which was destroyed during a bombing raid in WWII.
In the center of town we found the caf he depicted in Caf Terrace at Night. It is
now painted bright yellow with green streaks to mimic Van Goghs painting style. In
spite of the cheesy tourist vibe, it was fun to stand in the exact spot where Van Gogh
had done his painting.

From left: Vincent van Gogh. Garden of the Hospital in Arles. 1889. 28.7 in 36.2
(73.0 cm 92.0 cm). The Oskar Reinhart Collection Am Rmerholz, Winterthur,
Switzerland; The garden at the former hospital as it appears today. Photo by Alex
Roediger
Nearby we visited the local hospital where Van Gogh recovered after having cut off
part of his ear during an emotional breakdown. The garden today looks nearly the
same as it did 125 years ago.

From left: Vincent van Gogh. The Olive Trees. Saint Rmy, June-July 1889. Oil on
canvas. 28 5/8 x 36 (72.6 x 91.4 cm). Mrs. John Hay Whitney Bequest; View from
across the street from where The Olive Trees and the entrance to Saint-Paul. Photo by
Alex Roediger
After our visit to Arles, we drove 30 minutes to Saint-Rmy, where we got to visit the
Saint-Paul asylum, a psychiatric hospital that Van Gogh stayed in for one year.

Although depressed and lonely, Van Gogh made one masterpiece after another during
this time, including two works in MoMAs collection: The Olive Trees and The Starry
Night.

From left: Vincent van Gogh. The Starry Night. Saint Rmy, June 1889. Oil on
canvas, 29 x 36 1/4 (73.7 x 92.1 cm). Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest;
The view from Saint-Pauls asylum that inspired The Starry Night. Photo by Alex
Roediger
Although The Starry Night was based on the view of the surrounding hills from his
barred asylum window, much of the composition was imaginary, including the view
of the town and, most likely, the cypress tree. It was moving to grab the bars and
think, this is the sight that inspired him to paint The Starry Night, a picture that to me
feels so hopeful and spiritualin great contrast to the prison-like setting he was
confined to.

From left: Vincent van Gogh. Landscape from Saint-Rmy. Saint-Rmy: June, 1889.
Oil on canvas, 70.5 x 88.5 cm. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen; View from the
asylum yard, where Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds was painted. Photo by Alex
Roediger

Auberge Ravoux Inn, where Van Gogh lived for the last few months of his life. Photo
by Alex Roediger
For our last destination, we took a train to Auvers-sur-Oise, just north of Paris, where
Van Gogh lived for the last 70 days of his life, painting approximately one painting a
day. We took a tour of the inn, including the room where he lived and died. Although
his room is rather unremarkable, its well preserved due to the fact that no one has
rented the space since his death. Currently the owners are determined to get an
original Van Gogh painting to hang in his room.
Like Arles and Saint-Rmy, Auvers has maintained its small-town ambience and
beautiful buildings, and continues to keep the subjects of Van Goghs paintings
looking just as they did when he painted them.

From left: Vincent van Gogh. The Town Hall at Auvers. July 1890. Oil on canvas, 21
41 (53 103 cm). Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Leigh B. Block; The town hall
building today. Photo by Alex Roediger

From left: Vincent van Gogh. Stairway at Auvers. July 1890. Oil on canvas, 19 11/16
x 27 3/4 (50 x 70.5 cm). Saint Louis Art Museum. Purchase; The stairs today. Photo
by Alex Roediger
Walking toward the cemetery to visit his grave, we headed up the hill and past the
beautiful 800-year-old church he painted (in The Church at Auvers, 1890). Moments
later, we found ourselves immersed in the fields where Van Gogh is believed to have
shot himself before returning to the inn, where he eventually died.

From left: Vincent van Gogh. The Church in Auvers-sur-Oise, View from the Chevet.
June 1890. Oil on canvas, 94 x 74 cm. RMN-Grand Palais (Muse dOrsay)/Herv
Lewandowski; Notre-Dame d Auvers today. Photo by Alex Roediger

Fields near the church. Photo by Alex Roediger

We entered his cemetery and, nearly in tears, stood at the foot of Van Goghs grave,
where his brother Theo stood in grief on the day they buried him. Even more tragic
was that Theo died just six months after Vincent, at the age of 33, and is buried right
next to his brother under the same bed of ivy.

The graves of Vincent and Theo van Gogh. Photo by Alex Roediger
Immediately outside the cemetery, we walked down a muddy path and I realized that
not only was I walking inside the painting Wheatfields with Crows, but I could also
see the church he painted in the distance, the view of his landscape of Auvers in the

rain, the field that he likely shot himself in, and the cemetery that he shares with his
brother. At that moment I had never felt closer to Vincent.

From left: Vincent van Gogh. Wheatfield with Crows. Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890. Oil
on canvas, 50.5 x 103 cm. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh
Foundation); The field where Van Gogh painted Wheatfield with Crows. Photo by
Alex Roediger

From left: Vincent van Gogh. RainAuvers. 1890. Oil on canvas, 50.3 x 100.2 cm.
Amgueddfa CymruNational Museum of Wales, Cardiff Gwendoline Davies Bequest,
1952; The view today. Photo by Alex Roediger