The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh

The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh

A view from the asylum

Van Gogh painted it in June 1889 at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, where he had admitted himself the month before. It is based on the view from his east-facing bedroom window, across a walled field towards the low hills of the Alpilles, but it is not a record of it: the village with its pointed church spire is largely his own invention. He worked on the canvas by day, from memory, rather than out under the stars.

A sky in motion

The sky fills most of the canvas. A great spiral rolls across the middle of it, eleven stars burn inside haloes of yellow and white, and a crescent moon glows in the top right corner. The hills below roll in answering waves. On the left a cypress climbs from the bottom edge almost to the top, a dark flame that ties the earth to the sky. The paint goes on in short, thick strokes that stay visible, so the whole surface looks worked and restless. The bright star just above the hills is usually identified as Venus, the morning star, which Van Gogh wrote of seeing from his window before sunrise.

Where it hangs

It belongs to the Museum of Modern Art, New York, which acquired it in 1941 through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest, and measures 73.7 by 92.1 centimetres.

About this print

Made from a 9,000-pixel photograph of the original, enough to print sharply at up to about 60 inches on its longest side.

Sources: Museum of Modern Art, New York · Wikidata Q45585 · Wikimedia Commons