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The Starry Night

Vincent van Gogh · Post-Impressionism & Neo-Impressionism

Artist: Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890)
Date: 1889
Dimensions: 73.7 x 92.1 cm
Medium: Oil on canvas
Location: Museum of Modern Art, New York, United States

The Starry Night shows a night sky alive with swirling spirals of wind and light, eleven blazing stars and a glowing crescent moon above a quiet village. Van Gogh painted it in June 1889 at the asylum of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, where he had admitted himself after a breakdown.

A closer look

The view is based on what he saw from his east-facing window just before sunrise, but he painted it during the day from memory and imagination. He added the village with its church spire, which recalls his native Netherlands more than Provence, and the huge dark cypress in the foreground that rises like a flame, linking earth and sky. The thick, rhythmic brushstrokes turn the whole sky into movement. Van Gogh himself was not satisfied with it; today it is one of the most famous paintings in the world.

History of the painting

Van Gogh sent The Starry Night to his brother Theo, who thought it too stylised. After Theo's death his widow, Jo van Gogh-Bonger, sold it in 1900, and it passed through Dutch and French collections. In 1941 the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired it through an exchange of works from the bequest of Lillie P. Bliss, one of the museum's founders. It has since become one of the most reproduced paintings in the world and is rarely lent.

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