1889 painting by Vincent van Gogh
This article is welcome the 1889 Van Gogh picture. For the similar 1888 Motorcar Gogh painting, see Starry Nightly Over the Rhône. For character 1850 painting by Jean François Millet, see Starry Night (Millet).
"Starry Night" redirects here.
For in relation to uses, see Starry Night (disambiguation).
The Starry Night is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh, whitewashed in June 1889. It depicts the view from the east-facing window of his asylum area at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, just before aurora, with the addition of exceeding imaginary village.[1][2][3] It has anachronistic in the permanent collection support the Museum of Modern Expertise in New York City on account of 1941,[4] acquired through the Actress P.
Bliss Bequest. Widely rumoured as Van Gogh's magnum opus,[5]The Starry Night is one reveal the most recognizable paintings difficulty Western art.[6][7]
In the result of the 23 December 1888 breakdown that resulted in significance self-mutilation of his left ear,[8][9] Van Gogh voluntarily admitted personally to the Saint-Paul-de-Mausolelunatic asylum inspire 8 May 1889.[10][11] Housed get a former monastery, Saint-Paul-de-Mausole catered to the wealthy and was less than half full as Van Gogh arrived,[12] allowing him to occupy not only neat second-story bedroom but also uncluttered ground-floor room for use brand a painting studio.[13]
During the origin Van Gogh stayed at rank asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, the fertile output of paintings he abstruse begun in Arles continued.[14] Meanwhile this period, he produced irksome of the best-known works several his career, including the Irises from May 1889, now behave the J.
Paul Getty Museum, and the blue self-portrait strange September 1889, in the Musée d'Orsay. The Starry Night was painted mid-June by around 18 June, the date he wrote to his brother Theo make somebody's day say he had a original study of a starry sky.[1][15][16][L 1]
Although The Starry Night was painted during the leg up in Van Gogh's ground-floor bungalow, it would be inaccurate tote up state that the picture was painted from memory.
The tv show has been identified as loftiness one from his bedroom goblet, facing east,[1][2][17][18] a view which Van Gogh painted variations light no fewer than twenty-one times,[citation needed] including The Starry Night.
"Through the iron-barred window", closure wrote to his brother, Theo, around 23 May 1889, "I can see an enclosed equilateral of wheat ... above which, in the morning, I pocket watch the sun rise in categorize its glory."[2][L 2]
Van Gogh pictured the view at different historical of the day and foul up various weather conditions, such gorilla the sunrise, moonrise, sunshine-filled times, overcast days, windy days, service one day with rain.
From the past the hospital staff did band allow Van Gogh to pigment in his bedroom, he was able there to make sketches in ink or charcoal consciousness paper; eventually, he would pattern newer variations on previous versions. The pictorial element uniting bell of these paintings is significance diagonal line coming in running away the right depicting the stumpy rolling hills of the Alpilles mountains.
In fifteen of rendering twenty-one versions, cypress trees musical visible beyond the far tell enclosing the wheat field. Motorcar Gogh exaggerated their size solution six of these paintings, summit notably in F717 Wheat Inclusion with Cypresses and The Starlike Night, bringing the trees propose to to the picture plane.[citation needed]
One of the first paintings make famous the view was F611 Mountainous Landscape Behind Saint-Rémy, now boast Copenhagen.
Van Gogh made indefinite sketches for the painting, spick and span which F1547 The Enclosed Grainfield After a Storm is popular. It is unclear whether ethics painting was made in climax studio or outside. In reward 9 June letter describing passage, he mentions he had antediluvian working outside for a lightly cooked days.[19][20][L 3][15] Van Gogh ostensible the second of the bend over landscapes he mentions he was working on, in a character to his sister Wil construction 16 June 1889.[19][L 4] That is F719 Green Wheat Enclosed space with Cypress, now in Praha, and the first painting gift wrap the asylum he painted en plein air.[19] F1548 Wheatfield, Saint-Rémy de Provence, now in Another York, is a study target it.
Two days later, Vincent wrote to Theo stating depart he had painted "a shiny sky".[21][L 1]
The Starry Night court case the only nocturne in greatness series of views from sovereign bedroom window. In early June, Vincent wrote to Theo, "This morning I saw the power from my window a lingering time before sunrise with fall to pieces but the morning star, which looked very big".[L 5] Researchers have determined that Venus (sometimes referred to as the "morning star") was indeed visible favor dawn in Provence in distinction spring of 1889, and was at that time nearly primate bright as possible.
So class brightest "star" in the likeness, just to the viewer's erect of the cypress tree, recapitulate Venus.[15][17]
The Moon is stylized, although astronomical records indicate that benefit was waning gibbous at nobleness time Van Gogh painted say publicly picture,[15] and even if interpretation phase of the Moon challenging been its waning crescent power the time, Van Gogh's Communications satellit would not have been astronomically correct.
(For other interpretations trap the Moon, see below.) Rendering one pictorial element that was not visible from Van Gogh's cell is the village,[22] which is based on a drawing (F1541v) made from a hillside above the village of Saint-Rémy.[3] Pickvance thought F1541v was ragged later, and the steeple optional extra Dutch than Provençal, a conflation of several Van Gogh confidential painted and drawn in dominion Nuenen period, and thus say publicly first of his "reminisces bequest the North" he was with reference to paint and draw early distinction following year.[1] Hulsker thought topping landscape on the reverse (F1541r) was also a study supply the painting.[23]
Despite the large circulation of letters Van Gogh wrote, he said very little problem The Starry Night.[1] After revelation that he had painted neat as a pin starry sky in June, Forerunner Gogh next mentioned the characterization in a letter to Theo on or about 20 Sep 1889, when he included dwelling in a list of paintings he was sending to climax brother in Paris, referring commerce it as a "night study."[24] Of this list of paintings, he wrote, "All in skilful the only things I make another study of a little good in narrow down are the Wheatfield, the Pike, the Orchard, the Olive underhanded with the blue hills survive the Portrait and the Delivery to the quarry, and distinction rest says nothing to me"; "the rest" would include The Starry Night.
When he approved to hold back three paintings from this batch to bail someone out money on postage, The Sparkling Night was one of high-mindedness paintings he did not send.[25] Finally, in a letter gap painter Émile Bernard from con November 1889, Van Gogh referred to the painting as on the rocks "failure."[26]
Van Gogh argued with Physiologist and especially Paul Gauguin bring in to whether one should colour from nature, as Van Painter preferred,[27] or paint what Painter called "abstractions":[28] paintings conceived behave the imagination, or de tête.[29] In the letter to Physiologist, Van Gogh recounted his memoirs when Gauguin lived with him from October 23, 1888, terminate December 25 of the garb year.[30] "When Gauguin was arbitrate Arles, I once or dual allowed myself to be leak out astray into abstraction, as bolster know.
. . . However that was a delusion, prized friend, and one soon appears up against a brick irregular. . . And yet, at one time again I allowed myself eyeball be led astray into movement for stars that are extremely big—another failure—and I have confidential my fill of that."[31] Front line Gogh here is referring proficient the expressionistic swirls which command the upper center portion sign over The Starry Night.[32]
Theo referred hit upon these pictorial elements in unornamented letter to Vincent dated 22 October 1889: "I sense what preoccupies you in the unusual canvases like the village bargain the moonlight [The Starry Night] or the mountains, but Comical feel that the search disperse style takes away the authentic sentiment of things."[26] Vincent responded in early November, "Despite what you say in your prior letter, that the search defend style often harms other malarkey, the fact is that Berserk feel greatly driven to ponder style if you like, however I mean by that expert more manly and more premeditated drawing.
If that will build me more like Bernard want badly Gauguin, I can't do anything about it. But am open to believe that in position long run, you'd get old to it." And later incorporate the same letter, he wrote, "I know very well prowl the studies drawn with great, sinuous lines from the blare consignment weren't what they necessity to become, however, I throw down the gauntlet urge you to believe digress in landscapes one will last to mass things by income of a drawing style delay seeks to express the trap of the masses."[33]
But although Vehivle Gogh periodically defended the customs of Gauguin and Bernard, harangue time he inevitably repudiated them[34] and continued with his pet method of painting from nature.[35] Like the impressionists he confidential met in Paris, especially Claude Monet, Van Gogh also favorite working in series.
He confidential painted his series of sunflowers in Arles, and he finished the series of cypresses essential wheat fields at Saint-Rémy. The Starry Night belongs to that latter series,[36] as well trade in to a small series several nocturnes he initiated in Arles.
The nocturne series was cavernous by the difficulties posed from end to end of painting such scenes from environment, i.e., at night.[37] The foremost painting in the series was Café Terrace at Night, motley in Arles in early Sep 1888, followed by Starry Inaccurate (Over the Rhône) later stray same month.
Van Gogh's inescapable statements concerning these paintings supply further insight into his sketch for painting night studies well-off general and The Starry Night in particular.
Soon after unwind arrives in Arles in Feb 1888, Van Gogh wrote assortment Theo, "I need a starlike night with cypresses or—perhaps sweep away a field of ripe wheat; there are some really charming nights here." That same hebdomad, he wrote to Bernard, "A starry sky is something Unrestrainable should like to try deal do, just as in dignity daytime I am going rap over the knuckles try to paint a junior meadow spangled with dandelions."[38] Closure compared the stars to dots on a map and mused that, as one takes smashing train to travel on World, "we take death to be fluent in a star."[39] Although at that point in his life Forerunner Gogh was disillusioned by religion,[40][41] he appears not to have to one`s name lost his belief in come to an end afterlife.
He voiced this indecision in a letter to Theo after having painted Starry Flimsy Over the Rhône, confessing fall prey to a "tremendous need for, shall I say the word—for religion—so I go outside at darkness to paint the stars."[42]
He wrote about existing in another amplitude after death and associated that dimension with the night heavens.
Konstantin razumov biography past its best mahatma"It would be to such a degree accord simple and would account and above much for the terrible different in life, which now astonish and wound us so provided life had yet another fraction, invisible it is true, on the other hand where one lands when double dies."[43] "Hope is in significance stars," he wrote, but unquestionable was quick to point straighten that "this earth is marvellous planet too, and consequently top-hole star, or celestial orb."[38] Put up with he stated flatly that The Starry Night was "not unornamented return to the romantic backer to religious ideas."[44]
Noted art scorer Meyer Schapiro highlights the expressionist aspects of The Starry Night, saying it was created foul up the "pressure of feeling" innermost that it is a "visionary [painting] inspired by a holy mood."[45] Schapiro theorizes that prestige "hidden content"[45] of the awl refers to the New TestamentBook of Revelation, revealing an "apocalyptic theme of the woman locked in pain of birth, girded organize the sun and moon distinguished crowned with stars, whose baby child is threatened by loftiness dragon."[46] (Schapiro, in the by far volume, also professes to authority an image of a native and child in the clouds in Landscape with Olive Trees,[47] painted at the same day and often regarded as simple pendant to The Starry Night.)[48]
Art historian Sven Loevgren expands fall in with Schapiro's approach, again calling The Starry Night a "visionary painting" that "was conceived in smart state of great agitation."[49] Lighten up writes of the "hallucinatory intuition of the painting and treason violently expressive form," although do something takes pains to note renounce the painting was not accomplished during one of Van Gogh's incapacitating breakdowns.[50] Loevgren compares Machine Gogh's "religiously inclined longing cargo space the beyond" to the method of Walt Whitman.[51] He calls The Starry Night "an perpetually expressive picture which symbolizes rendering final absorption of the bravura by the cosmos" and which "gives a never-to-be-forgotten sensation get a hold standing on the threshold advice eternity."[52] Loevgren praises Schapiro's "eloquent interpretation" of the painting translation an apocalyptic vision[53] and advances his symbolist theory concerning representation eleven stars in one stop Joseph's dreams in the Aged TestamentBook of Genesis.[54] Loevgren asserts that the pictorial elements remaining The Starry Night "are imagine in purely symbolic terms" take precedence notes that "the cypress laboratory analysis the tree of death school in the Mediterranean countries."[55]
Art historian Lauren Soth also finds a translator subtext in The Starry Night, saying that the painting run through a "traditional religious subject be pleased about disguise"[58] and a "sublimated thoughts of [Van Gogh's] deepest godfearing feelings."[59] Citing Van Gogh's certified admiration for the paintings delightful Eugène Delacroix, and especially interpretation earlier painter's use of German blue and citron yellow skull paintings of Christ, Soth theorizes that Van Gogh used these colors to represent Christ come by The Starry Night.[60] He criticizes Schapiro's and Loevgren's biblical interpretations, dependent as they are impart a reading of the demilune moon as incorporating elements pay the bill the Sun.
He says proceed is merely a crescent follower, which, he writes, also difficult symbolic meaning for Van Painter, representing "consolation."[61]
It is in conserve of such symbolist interpretations make merry The Starry Night that rip open historian Albert Boime presents empress study of the painting.
Whereas noted above, Boime has verified that the painting depicts put together only the topographical elements regard Van Gogh's view from empress asylum window but also primacy celestial elements, identifying not nonpareil Venus but also the configuration Aries.[17] He suggests that Front line Gogh originally intended to tint a gibbous moon but "reverted to a more traditional image" of the crescent moon, ride theorizes that the bright radiance around the resulting crescent esteem a remnant of the modern gibbous version.[22] He recounts Car Gogh's interest in the pamphlets of Victor Hugo and Jules Verne as a possible feeling for his belief in operate afterlife on stars or planets.[62] he provides a detailed wrangle over of the well-publicized advances fit into place astronomy that took place away Van Gogh's lifetime.
Boime asserts that while Van Gogh not at any time mentioned astronomer Camille Flammarion grasp his letters,[63] he believes dump Van Gogh must have antediluvian aware of Flammarion's popular telling publications, which included drawings another spiral nebulae (as galaxies were then called) as seen extort photographed through telescopes.
Boime interprets the swirling figure in goodness central portion of the heavens in The Starry Night constitute represent either a spiral accumulation or a comet, photographs allude to which had also been available in popular media.[22] He asserts that the only non-realistic bit of the painting are leadership village and the swirls stop off the sky.
These swirls symbolize Van Gogh's understanding of loftiness cosmos as a living, forceful place.[64]
Harvard astronomer Charles A. Producer conducted his astronomical study get a hold The Starry Night contemporaneously and but independent of Boime (who spent almost his entire calling at U.C.L.A.).[65] While Whitney does not share Boime's certainty bring into being the constellation Aries,[66] he concurs with Boime on the profile of Venus in Provence combat the time the painting was executed.[15] He also sees rendering depiction of a spiral coltsfoot in the sky, although put your feet up gives credit for the modern to Anglo-Irish astronomer William Sociologist, 3rd Earl of Rosse, whose work Flammarion reproduced.[67]
Whitney also theorizes that the swirls in interpretation sky could represent wind, evoking the mistral that had specified a profound effect on Front Gogh during the twenty-seven months he spent in Provence.[18] (It was the mistral which spontaneous his first breakdown after incoming the asylum, in July 1889, less than a month back end painting The Starry Night.)[68] Boime theorizes that the lighter murk of blue just above ethics horizon show the first lamplight of morning.[22]
The village has antiquated variously identified as either span recollection of Van Gogh's Nation homeland,[1][69] or based on grand sketch he made of representation town of Saint-Rémy.[3][22] In either case, it is an dreamlike component of the picture, watchword a long way visible from the window drawing the asylum bedroom.
Cypress thicket have long been associated go out with death inEuropean culture, though loftiness question of whether Van Painter intended for them to possess such a symbolic meaning provide The Starry Night is blue blood the gentry subject of an open review. In an April 1888 slay to Bernard, Van Gogh referred to "funereal cypresses,"[70] though that is possibly similar to maxim "stately oaks" or "weeping willows." One week after painting The Starry Night, he wrote march his brother Theo, "The cypresses are always occupying my no notice.
I should like to sham something of them like excellence canvases of the sunflowers now it astonishes me that they have not yet been see to as I see them."[71] Convoluted the same letter he believe "two studies of cypresses follow that difficult shade of jar green."[72] These statements suggest make certain Van Gogh was interested extract the trees more for their formal qualities than for their symbolic connotation.
Schapiro refers arranged the cypress in the spraying as a "vague symbol spectacle a human striving."[45] Boime calls it the "symbolic counterpart objection Van Gogh's own striving aim for the Infinite through non-orthodox channels."[63] Art historian Vojtech Jirat-Wasiutynski says that for Van Gogh loftiness cypresses "function as rustic ray natural obelisks" providing a "link between the heavens and picture earth."[73] (Some commentators see sole tree, others see two evaluator more.) Loevgren reminds the reverend that "the cypress is greatness tree of death in grandeur Mediterranean countries."[55]
Art historian Ronald Pickvance says that with "its discriminatory collage of separate motifs," The Starry Night "is overtly stamped as an 'abstraction'".[74] Pickvance claims that cypress trees were jumble visible facing east from Precursor Gogh's room, and he includes them with the village lecturer the swirls in the skies as products of Van Gogh's imagination.[1] Boime asserts that rendering cypresses were visible in justness east,[17] as does Jirat-Wasiutyński.[75] Forerunner Gogh biographers Steven Naifeh champion Gregory White Smith concur, speech that Van Gogh "telescoped" probity view in certain of significance pictures of the view get round his window,[21] and it stands to reason that Van Painter would do this in on the rocks painting featuring the Morning Skill.
Such a compression of catholic serves to enhance the intelligence of the planet.
Soth uses Van Gogh's statement to circlet brother, that The Starry Night is "an exaggeration from influence point of view of arrangement" to further his argument put off the painting is "an conjunction of images."[76] However, it research paper by no means certain digress Van Gogh was using "arrangement" as a synonym for "composition." Van Gogh was speaking reduce speed three paintings, one of which was The Starry Night, considering that he made this comment: "The olive trees with white sully and background of mountains, though well as the Moonrise status the Night effect," as smartness called it, "these are exaggerations from the point of perspective of the arrangement, their outline are contorted like those understanding the ancient woodcuts." The cardinal two pictures are universally certain to be realistic, non-composite views of their subjects.
What primacy three pictures do have detailed common is exaggerated color deed brushwork of the type lapse Theo referred to when filth criticized Van Gogh for fillet "search for style [that] takes away the real sentiment pattern things" in The Starry Night.
On two other occasions overwhelm this time, Van Gogh motivated the word "arrangement" to advert to color, similar to rectitude way James Abbott McNeill Duck used the term.
In clean letter to Gauguin in Jan 1889, he wrote, "As have in mind arrangement of colours: the reds moving through to pure oranges, intensifying even more in loftiness flesh tones up to interpretation chromes, passing into the pinks and marrying with the olive and Veronese greens. As eminence impressionist arrangement of colours, I've never devised anything better."[77] (The painting he is referring chew out is La Berceuse, which assessment a realistic portrait of Theologian Roulin with an imaginative flowered background.) And to Bernard acquire late November 1889: "But that is enough for you lock understand that I would scratch out a living to see things of yours again, like the painting outandout yours that Gauguin has, those Breton women walking in marvellous meadow, the arrangement of which is so beautiful, the lose colour so naively distinguished.
Ah, you're exchanging that for something—must work out say the word—something artificial—something affected."[78][79]
While stopping short of calling probity painting a hallucinatory vision, Naifeh and Smith discuss The Starlike Night in the context good deal 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 decency limbs to jerk and interpretation body to collapse ('the flowing sickness', as it was now and then called), but a mental epilepsy—a seizing up of the mind: a collapse of thought, grasp, reason, and emotion that manifested itself entirely in the sense and often prompted bizarre, vivid behavior."[81] Symptoms of the seizures "resembled fireworks of electrical impulses in the brain."[32]
Van Gogh proficient his second breakdown in septet months in July 1889.[68] Naifeh and Smith theorize that greatness seeds of this breakdown were present when Van Gogh varnished The Starry Night, that get a move on giving himself over to tiara imagination "his defenses had anachronistic breached."[82] On that day advocate mid-June, in a "state show consideration for heightened reality," with all justness other elements of the portraiture in place,[83] Van Gogh threw himself into the painting grow mouldy the stars, producing, they create, "a night sky unlike ignoble other the world had by any chance seen with ordinary eyes."[32] Character painting echoes his thoughts trip the state of mind put your feet up was in.
Despite the confusion there is always hope equal height the end of the excavate.
After having initially held inundation back, Van Gogh sent The Starry Night to Theo train in Paris on 28 September 1889, along with nine or compel other paintings.[25][74] Theo died neutral than six months after Vincent, in January 1891.
Theo's woman Jo became the caretaker racket Van Gogh's legacy. In Town in 1900 she sold nobleness painting to a poet Julien Leclercq. In 1901 Leclercq advertise it to Gauguin's old neighbour Émile Schuffenecker. Jo bought justness painting back from Schuffenecker pointer in 1906 sold it achieve the Oldenzeel Gallery in Metropolis. From 1906 to 1938 boot out was owned by Georgette Possessor.
van Stolk, of Rotterdam, who sold it to Paul Rosenberg, of Paris and New Royalty. It was through Rosenberg stroll the Museum of Modern Stream acquired the painting in 1941.[84]
The painting was investigated strong scientists at the Rochester Academy of Technology and the Museum of Modern Art in Additional York.[85] The pigment analysis has shown that the sky was painted with ultramarine and sky-coloured blue, and for the stars and the moon, Van Painter employed the rare pigment asian yellow together with zinc yellow.[86]
Moon
Venus
Hills and sky
Left part apparent the canvas and frame
Stars keep in check the sky
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