van gogh starry night biography

“Starry Night” van Gogh – In-Depth Analysis and Facts

From a painting that was supposedly just a study of a starry night to becoming an overnight sensation by an artist who is immortalized and remembered for cutting off his own ear. This is of course the beloved Vincent van Gogh, who painted The Starry Night (1889). In this article, we will discuss this painting in more detail by looking at why it was painted and the stylistic elements that have kept it swirling in all our memories.

Table of Contents

• 1 Artist Abstract: Who Was Vincent van Gogh?
• 2.1.1 A Little Bit More About Post-Impressionism
• 2.1.2 Paris, the Yellow House, and a Severed Ear
• 2.1.3 Theo van Gogh
• 3.1 Subject Matter
• 3.2 A Matter of Swirls: Color and Light
• 3.3 Perspective and Space
• 3.4 Symbolism and Style
• 3.5 Not to Be Confused With the Other Starry Night
• 4 Reaching for the Stars
• 5.1 Who Painted The Starry Night? 
• 5.2 Where Was The Starry Night Painted?
• 5.3 How Many Starry Night Paintings Are There?
• 5.4 Where Is The Starry Night Painting Housed?
• 5.5 How Much Is The Starry Night Worth?

Artist Abstract: Who Was Vincent van Gogh?

Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in the Netherlands. He attended a couple of boarding schools during his youth and worked as an art dealer at Goupil & Cie from 1869. Van Gogh was not a successful artist and had a mentally challenging life. Although his art developed as he matured as an artist, he nonetheless had various occasions where he was admitted to psychiatric hospitals. After a stint with Paul Gauguin, van Gogh also cut a part of his ear off . He sadly committed suicide on 27 July 1890 by shooting himself in the chest and only dying more than 24 hours afterward.

The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh in Context

Although Vincent van Gogh was not a famous artist when he was alive, he left a legacy of artwork few, if any, can compare with. The Vincent van Gogh paintings collection is infused with the depth of his emotional, mental, and spiritual inner world. He was what we call a “tortured” artist and experienced considerable inner turmoil.

His art depicts bright and colorful landscapes and objects with expressive and dynamic brushstrokes.

Below we will explore how van Gogh brought his inner dimensions to life on his canvases, namely the painting The Starry Night (1889). We will first look at a contextual analysis and where van Gogh was at the time of painting this starry night. We will also discuss how van Gogh fit into the Post-Impressionist movement of the time.

Lastly, we will provide a formal analysis of The Starry Night painting and place a telescopic view on the artist’s utilization of color, form, and perspective. There is a lot happening and swirling in his iconic painting and all of it adds to The Starry Night’s meaning. So, let us look further. 

Contextual Analysis: A Brief Socio-Historical Overview

When van Gogh painted The Starry Night in 1889, he was staying in the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole mental asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in the southern parts of France. The preceding events leading up to his admission to the hospital were quite tumultuous and involved a confrontation with his acquaintance and fellow Post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin, and van Gogh cutting off a part of his own ear. He reportedly experienced a severe psychotic break after these events and would have various more.

During his stay he had two rooms, one was a bedroom, and one was utilized as a painting studio. His subject matter was of the asylum and its surrounding gardens, although he was able to move around more than most of the other patients. His room, which was apparently east-facing, had a view of the French Alpilles mountain range, which inspired a lot of his landscapes.

However, his painting studio did not have a view of the mountains, but it is believed van Gogh painted a lot from memory, imagination, and other artworks.

A Little Bit More About Post-Impressionism

During the 1880s, several artists moved away from the realists’ approach of painting from nature and the world as they saw it. This approach is referred to as en plein air , which means “outdoors” in French. The Impressionists focused on portraying the real aspects of life and not so much the depiction of the more traditional and classic subject matter we see from Renaissance paintings.

Colors and brushwork were more expressive and artists were not focused on the type of stylistic elements like symmetry, order, and form. It is often described as an optical form of art because artists focused on how they perceived the natural world and painted it accordingly. One of the leading figures during this new and revolutionary modern period of art was Claude Monet. 

There was no one set of rules for Post-Impressionists, which followed directly after, as they all approached their art in different ways and styles. However, a common thread was that artworks were generally more abstract and symbolic, not as focused on trying to depict the natural environment as the Impressionists were. Some artists like Paul Cézanne focused on how compositions relied on fundamental forms as he stated, “Treat nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone”.

Artists like Paul Gauguin and van Gogh depicted their subject matter rooted in more emotional perspectives and symbolism.

Gauguin developed a style called Synthetism, which referred to the “synthesis” of all the influencing elements of what makes the artwork. This includes the formal qualities of colors and lines, the external subject matter, and the subjective feelings of the artist, and as mentioned earlier in the case of van Gogh, can be derived from imagination and memory.

Paris, the Yellow House, and a Severed Ear

As per van Gogh’s invitation to join him, he and Paul Gauguin worked closely together in the French city called Arles during the 1880s. They rented and worked in the same space, which was referred to as the “Yellow House”, for a couple of months. Van Gogh moved to Arles from Paris.

Whilst in Paris, he lived with his brother Theo for a while and acquainted himself with the art society there. He also held and participated in several exhibitions.

Interestingly, during van Gogh’s time in Paris, he met several important figures from the Impressionist movement, namely, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet , Camille Pissarro, and Georges Seurat. These artists also influenced van Gogh’s style and, apparently, he utilized a lighter color scheme as a result.

Back to the Yellow House. This move was part of van Gogh’s goal to start a new community for artists in Arles, including his desire to have Gauguin there to be a part of it. It was Gauguin’s unique style and use of different colors from when he lived in Martinique that inspired both Vincent and Theo van Gogh who saw these paintings after Gauguin’s return to Paris.

The paintings were reportedly at the home of Gauguin’s acquaintance, Émile Schuffenecker. The brothers bought one of these paintings called The Mango Trees (1887) and a few other works and drawings. Importantly, Theo van Gogh became Gauguin’s art dealer and contributed to his artistic success in Paris. It is also believed that Gauguin’s venture to Martinique could have inspired Vincent van Gogh to also leave the city to find another place of artistic inspiration – in this case, Arles.

It was a tumultuous partnership between Gauguin and van Gogh because the artists were quite different in their styles.

The two artists did in fact achieve a “colossal amount of work”, reportedly creating over 50 works collectively. But, sadly, their differences interrupted them and whatever happened between the two, Gauguin ended up leaving the yellow house and van Gogh severed part of his ear.

This brings us full circle again to the events of van Gogh’s stay at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole.

He apparently voluntarily admitted himself. His bouts of mental disruptions could have been part of the reason why it became difficult for Gauguin to remain at the house. However, the two acquaintances are remembered to have remained in touch with one another through writing letters; Theo van Gogh also continued supporting Gauguin as an artist through his work as an art dealer.

Theo van Gogh

Theo van Gogh is worth mentioning here because he was an important person in Vincent van Gogh’s life, not only because the two were brothers – Theo was younger than Vincent – but he also provided considerable financial support to Vincent as well as advice and guidance on various matters.

Because Theo was an art dealer, some may wonder how much is The Starry Night worth and where is The Starry Night painting now? However, this painting was handed over to Theo when Vincent died and eventually became part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1941 through the art dealer Paul Rosenberg.  

A lot of what we know about Vincent van Gogh’s artwork and life comes from around 600 letters between him and his brother, although he did write other letters to acquaintances such as Paul Gauguin, Émile Bernard, and Anthon van Rappard.

These letters were compiled into a book, published in 1914, by Theo’s wife, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger after the two brothers’ deaths. 

Formal Analysis: A Brief Compositional Overview

Below we explore van Gogh’s, The Starry Night further, first, we will look at what exactly we are looking at in this swirling nightscape of colors and brushstrokes, which will lead us on to discuss van Gogh’s stylistic elements like his use of color and technique.

Subject Matter

Let us start with the foreground, to the lower-left corner we see a dark cypress tree reaching up into the sky, it has been likened to long flames reaching upwards. We see the top tendril nestling itself in-between some of the large yellow orbs of stars in the sky.

Similarly, we can also notice the long spiral of the church situated in the middle ground of the composition. This is echoed with the cypress tree in the foreground.

Looking at the middle ground, we see what appears to be a small village, the said church as the central focal point. To the right, the village is flanked by a hilly area that flattens out from the right to the left side of the composition.

An interesting fact about the village is that it was believed to be created from van Gogh’s imagination, perhaps from sketches done of Saint-Rémy. Some sources also suggest it could have been from his memories of where he grew up, such as the church steeple resembles churches from Holland and apparently not churches found in France.

The foreground and middle ground make up almost one-third of the painting, with the other two-thirds making up the vast expanse of blues that make the night sky. The way van Gogh depicted the night sky is bright and quite light; it is not a dark evening. This is undoubtedly the effect created by the moonlight and light from the stars, which appear as pulsating shining orbs of light. In fact, van Gogh emphasized their shine with auras of yellows and whites, but we will get to his color scheme further below.

We see around 11 stars in the sky with the crescent moon brightly shining, almost like a sun, in the top right corner. The night sky is lit up, giving us a clear view of the entire village and surrounding landscape.

A Matter of Swirls: Color and Light

Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night is a matter of swirls, and this is what makes his composition, and emphasizes the subject matter. There is significant dynamism in The Starry Night , created from the thick application of brushstrokes in flowing and circular lines.

Just look at the large swirls curling in the center of the sky. If we look for a while, we might think the sky will start moving almost like each swath of swirl moves in on the other like tectonic plates, but here they are, ephemeral in the sky.

Van Gogh creates a sense of movement with choppier white lines as the sky meets the mountains in the background – these seemingly move in unison as the mountain range becomes increasingly flatter. The white swathes appear like snow or fog creating a blanket over the hilltops, equally making the hilltops appear rhythmic. We see this effect in the brushstrokes delineating the Cypress tree in the foreground. Van Gogh brings the entire composition to life with the way he applies color and brushstrokes.

If we look at each star, and the moon, there is an aura of yellow and white surrounding it. Some are painted in white and others yellow, but we notice that van Gogh uses these colors in combination, which also creates softer tones of yellow, especially around the crescent-shaped moon.

This also points to van Gogh’s utilization of complementary colors and his cognizance of these formal elements that make a painting.

Additionally, in The Starry Night van Gogh also utilized darker hues of blue to create contrast. We see this in this starry night background near the hillside, especially to the far right in the middle ground where the hilltop meets the sky. This appears almost black in color, which is juxtaposed with that foggy white swath of the sky that we mentioned above.

The moon itself is a brighter shade of yellow and there is another star to the left of the composition that is also in a brighter yellow, it lies directly across from the moon. This star is Venus, the Morning Star. It is believed that van Gogh witnessed the Venus star in the morning while staring out of his window. In one of the letters to his brother Theo, Letter 777 (1889), van Gogh wrote:

“This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big.”

The application of colors and brushstrokes creates a moving textural composition and a study of the night. In fact, van Gogh referred to this painting as a “Night effect” in one of his letters to Theo ( Letter 806 , 1889). Van Gogh sent his “Night effect” along with another “consignment of canvases”.

Perspective and Space

Van Gogh’s The Starry Night is a rich combination of vertical, horizontal, diagonal, and circular lines, made from the utilization of thick brushstrokes and outlines. As we have stated, these create a sense of movement and quite visibly create a whole new perspective, one that is flowing and seemingly of another world, some would describe the painting as almost hallucinogenic.

Perspective is further highlighted by the looming verticality of the Cypress tree in the foreground. We see this verticality echoed in the steeple of the church in the near distance, which gives the impression of depth.

This perspective plays directly with the spatial aspects of the composition, and the large expanse of the sky makes the village appear smaller and almost not as significant as the sky above, which seemingly takes precedence.

However, this is understandable as van Gogh’s intention seemed to be rooted in studying the night sky and how to stylistically depict this.

Symbolism and Style

There are several ideas around The Starry Night meaning. Some believe van Gogh painted The Starry Night as a symbol of his inner turmoil, especially regarding the Cypress tree in the foreground, which supposedly symbolizes death. However, it is suggested he painted the Cypress tree for the purposes of stylistic study and not so much for the inherent cultural meaning of it.

Van Gogh mentioned studying the depiction of Cypress trees just like he has with wheatfields, in one of his letters to Theo. In Letter 783 , 1883, he wrote about ideas he had and that a “wheatfield or a cypress are well worth the effort of looking at them from close at hand”. He further explained about the Cypress tree, saying:

“[they] still preoccupy me; I’d like to do something with them like the canvases of the sunflowers because it astonishes me that no one has yet done them as I see them.”

In The Starry Night , van Gogh shows us his personal expression even though this is a night study of the natural environment. This touches on his stylistic experimentations of the time. It also includes how his colleagues like Gauguin approached painting because while van Gogh was more inclined to paint scenes en plein air , Gauguin painted more abstracted artworks. 

This was a matter of question for van Gogh as he also wrote about it in one of his letters to another colleague, Émile Bernard, where he explained that he “allowed” himself to be “led astray into abstraction” when Gauguin and he lived and worked together.

He further explained that his painting was a failure, saying that he “once again” allowed himself to be “led astray into reaching for stars that are too big”.

Theo van Gogh also commented on The Starry Night and Vincent’s veer towards a somewhat different style. He remarked in one of his letters ( Letter 813 , 1889): “I clearly sense what preoccupies you in the new canvases like the village in the moonlight or the mountains, but I feel that the search for style takes away the real sentiment of things”. He then continued that he could see the “same preoccupations” with Gauguin’s paintings, which just showed more “memories of the Japanese, the Egyptians, etc.” 

Ultimately, Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night painting has been the topic of numerous art historical postulations and many point to this painting as being a symbol of van Gogh’s expression of a higher realm of existence.

The swirls have been believed to be van Gogh’s depiction of the cosmos as well as possibly the wind. Martin Bailey, a reporter who is also known as a specialist on Vincent van Gogh, has presented the theory that the artist was inspired by the waves we see in the Japanese painter, Katsushika Hokusai’s woodblock print called The Great Wave off Kanagawa (1831).

Apparently, van Gogh was an avid admirer of the Japanese style and a collector of Japanese art. This is also important because during the middle of the 1800s up to the early 1900s, the Japonism style, especially the Ukiyo-e Japanese woodblock prints, was significantly influential in European art styles.

Van Gogh and many other artists from the Impressionist movement were influenced by it, especially how perspective and space were utilized as well as how colors were applied in bright tones.

Not to Be Confused With the Other Starry Night

Vincent van Gogh painted the above-mentioned The Starry Night in 1889, however, this is part of a series of other Vincent van Gogh paintings of night scenes by the artist, these are typically known as the Nocturne series. He painted Starry Night Over the Rhȏne in 1888. This version is the River Rhȏne in Arles.

In it we see two figures standing in the foreground on the river bank. We also notice the loose use of brushstrokes and colors depicting how the light from the city reflects on the river and we see the yellow orbs of stars in the sky we have come to know so well from his later The Starry Night painting. 

Van Gogh painted this starry night background scene outside using the light from a gas lamp. This is quite different from how he painted the later version, which was completely inside, in his art studio. 

The other painting in van Gogh’s night series is called Café Terrace at Night (1888), which was also painted in Arles at the Place du Forum. Here we see a view of a cafe to the left with the warm glow from the interior lighting. We also see the illuminated night sky above with sparkling stars and the road below moving into darkness further ahead.

Van Gogh wrote about his composition and enthusiasm about painting the scene at night in one of his letters to Willemien van Gogh, his sister. In Letter 678, 1888 , he explains the colors he utilized to paint the darkness, “Now there’s a painting of night without black. With nothing but beautiful blue, violet, and green, and in these surroundings the lighted square is colored pale sulfur, lemon green. I enormously enjoy painting on the spot at night”. In the same letter, van Gogh also mentioned his eagerness about painting the starry sky next, as this was one of his earlier night scenes. He explains:

“I definitely want to paint a starry sky now. It often seems to me that the night is even more richly colored than the day, colored in the most intense violets, blues, and greens”.

This is a testament to how van Gogh enjoyed experimenting with different colors to achieve the effects of not only different types of light at night, whether natural or artificial as we see from inside the café but daylight too. He also painted from the natural environment around him, testament again to the Impressionistic style, however, he combined this en plein air approach with his emotions and how he experienced these surroundings.

Reaching for the Stars

Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh created hundreds of paintings and sketches throughout his life as an artist, but he did not achieve wide success like other artists. Only after his death did he become popular, and sometimes his paintings even stole the show, The Starry Night (1889) discussed in the article above was one of them. Now considered a masterpiece from the Post-Impressionism art movement, The Starry Night is the star of the show and a 21st-century pop cultural scene easily spotted on memorabilia ranging from mugs to magnets.

Vincent van Gogh did not have an easy life, he experienced considerable mental challenges and struggles that undoubtedly affected the way he made his art, and possibly even enhanced his own personal style. He was a man deeply devoted to depicting beautiful scenes of the natural world in rich textures and colors that not only showed his expressive artistic style, but also his inner world.

This inner world was seemingly just like his use of complementary colors, a mix of inner turmoil, but not without a mix of his sincere appreciation of the beauty of the world he experienced during the day and night. Vincent van Gogh was sadly his own victim, committing suicide in the end and leaving all his artwork to his brother Theo van Gogh, but it was his collection of artworks that continued his legacy and lives on for him.

Take a look at our The Starry Night  painting webstory here!

Frequently Asked Questions

Who painted the starry night  .

The Starry Night (1889) painting is a famous oil painting by Vincent van Gogh, who was part of the Post-Impressionism art movement during the 19th century.  

Where Was The Starry Night Painted?

The Starry Night (1889) was painted while Vincent van Gogh was staying at the mental institution called Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in the town called Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, which is in France. Many sources suggest van Gogh painted this scene from memory, imagination, and other works of art. It was also painted in his studio at the asylum, which did not have a view of the mountains. However, his bedroom window, which was in a separate room, had a view of the mountains. 

How Many Starry Night Paintings Are There?

Vincent van Gogh completed two paintings with similar titles depicting night scenes (although there were others exploring the nighttime). His first rendition was called Starry Night Over the Rhône (1888), which was a depiction of the Rhône River located in Arles where van Gogh lived at the time. However, this painting should not be confused with another titled The Starry Night (1889), which was when the artist lived in the mental asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.

Where Is The Starry Night Painting Housed?

The 1889 version of The Starry Night by van Gogh is now housed in the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City. The Starry Night original painting was initially in Theo van Gogh’s possessions and then after Theo’s death, it was the property of his wife. Through different hands, The Starry Night eventually found its way to the French art dealer Paul Rosenberg, from whom the MOMA acquired it in 1941.

How Much Is The Starry Nigh t Worth?

The Starry Night original painting by Vincent van Gogh, painted in 1889, is estimated to be worth over $100 million. However, this painting is one of van Gogh’s masterpieces and it can also be argued that there cannot be a price for it – it is priceless. 

Alicia du Plessis is a multidisciplinary writer. She completed her Bachelor of Arts degree, majoring in Art History and Classical Civilization, as well as two Honors, namely, in Art History and Education and Development, at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. For her main Honors project in Art History, she explored perceptions of the San Bushmen’s identity and the concept of the “Other”. She has also looked at the use of photography in art and how it has been used to portray people’s lives.

Alicia’s other areas of interest in Art History include the process of writing about Art History and how to analyze paintings. Some of her favorite art movements include Impressionism and German Expressionism. She is yet to complete her Masters in Art History (she would like to do this abroad in Europe) having given it some time to first develop more professional experience with the interest to one day lecture it too.

Alicia has been working for artincontext.com since 2021 as an author and art history expert. She has specialized in painting analysis and is covering most of our painting analysis.

Learn more about Alicia du Plessis and the Art in Context Team .

Cite this Article

Alicia, du Plessis, ““Starry Night” van Gogh – In-Depth Analysis and Facts.” Art in Context. October 21, 2021. URL: https://artincontext.org/starry-night-van-gogh/

du Plessis, A. (2021, 21 October). “Starry Night” van Gogh – In-Depth Analysis and Facts. Art in Context. https://artincontext.org/starry-night-van-gogh/

du Plessis, Alicia. ““Starry Night” van Gogh – In-Depth Analysis and Facts.” Art in Context , October 21, 2021. https://artincontext.org/starry-night-van-gogh/ .

Similar Posts

“Fallen Angel” by Alexandre Cabanel – Famous Painting of Lucifer

“Golconda” by René Magritte – The “Golconda” Painting Analysis

Ancient Egyptian Paintings – Explore Ancient Egyptian Artwork

Most Expensive Paintings – The 30 Priciest Paintings Ever Sold

“The Fighting Temeraire” by William Turner – The Ship Painting

“Lake George Reflection” by Georgia O’Keeffe – A Painting Analysis

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

The Most Famous Artists and Artworks

Discover the most famous artists, paintings, sculptors…in all of history! 

MOST FAMOUS ARTISTS AND ARTWORKS

Discover the most famous artists, paintings, sculptors!

Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night

Video transcript

[0:00] [music]

Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:04] We’re on the fifth floor of the Museum of Modern Art, looking at probably their most famous painting, Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night.”

Dr. Beth Harris: [0:12] This is something that Van Gogh had been interested in. Before he painted this particular painting, he did another version of a night sky, which is very different.

[0:21] In the foreground, we see the giant undulating form of a cypress tree.

Dr. Zucker: [0:25] We don’t see the bottom of that cypress tree. It’s cut off at the bottom edge of the frame, and so we get the sense that it must be close to us.

[0:33] The sky takes up almost three-quarters of the canvas. It reminds me of the great Dutch landscapes of the 17th century, of artists like Ruisdael, who was interested in the movements of clouds through the sky and the play of light there. But, of course, this is night. The only light is from the moon and from the stars.

Dr. Harris: [0:52] We’re looking down past that cypress into a valley, where we see some small cottages and a church very prominently, centrally placed, with a steeple that just breaks the horizon line formed by those mountains. The village seems very humble but also embraced by the mountains behind it and that cypress in front.

[1:15] There’s a band of lighter yellows and blues just above the hills, further protecting that landscape below. It feels protected to me at the same time that there’s all this turmoil in the sky that we see in these circular brushstrokes.

Dr. Zucker: [1:33] The brushwork has tremendous energy. One stroke follows another, linking to create these streams of energy through the sky. And although the paint is somewhat thick in certain areas, we can also see the canvas in certain areas. And so it is not that heavily painted. Nevertheless, there is a kind of energy and velocity, a kind of dynamism, as those clouds roll through the sky.

Dr. Harris: [1:57] And I think that dynamism, that energy that’s in the brushwork in the clouds or forms that swirl through the sky, the way that the moon emits a pulsing light, and even the stars and planets emit that brighter light than they do in reality, that, for me, contrasts with the tranquility of the village below that’s nestled in that valley.

[2:22] There’s a sense of a presence of activity in the sky, which we associate with the heavens and the divine, as though those things were alive and somehow protecting the village underneath. At least, that’s one way that I read this painting sometimes.

Dr. Zucker: [2:38] Some art historians have looked then at the cypress, a tree that symbolizes death, in part because it’s often found in cemeteries.

Dr. Harris: [2:46] There’s a linking of the earthly and the heavenly with that cypress that undulates almost like fire.

Dr. Zucker: [2:53] And is mimicked by the steeple of the church in the valley, so that there’s this pairing where the tree and the steeple are both reaching up to the heavens.

Dr. Harris: [3:02] Van Gogh, like other artists of the 1870s and ’80s, is thinking about complementary colors. He’s thinking about blues, and yellows, and oranges, and how colors can intensify one another and work together to communicate ideas and feelings.

[3:18] This is definitely not a landscape that Van Gogh saw. This is something constructed from memory and from his imagination. Think about how brave this painting is. To do something with brushwork this visible, this sketchy, this energized.

Dr. Zucker: [3:37] I would say this [is] divorced from what he would have seen. There’s an abstraction of form here that the artist is comfortable with which is absolutely radical.

Dr. Harris: [3:46] And if you think about so much of his work, it is images of what he could see and that he went out specifically to paint. But here, this incredible bravery to do something based on his emotions, his memories, his experiences, and his imagination.

Dr. Zucker: [4:02] In 1889, Van Gogh was in an asylum in Saint-Rémy in Southern France, what had once been a monastery. Van Gogh had a view out his window that was relatively close to this, but there is no church there. There is no village there.

Dr. Harris: [4:18] Van Gogh is in this asylum because he suffered a series of breakdowns. He suffered from mental illness for much of his life, although it got worse after a fight with his fellow painter Gauguin, when he cut his ear.

Dr. Zucker: [4:32] Van Gogh was encouraged to paint at the asylum and was given a studio space where he had no view at all, and where this was likely painted. So this was not painted in plein air, this was not painted out-of-doors.

[4:43] What a journey this painting has taken from that room in Saint-Rémy to the fifth floor of the Museum of Modern Art, reproduced around the world, recognized by people everywhere. It’s a fate that I don’t think the artist could have ever imagined.

[4:58] [music]

A rare night landscape

The curving, swirling lines of hills, mountains, and sky, the brilliantly contrasting blues and yellows, the large, flame-like cypress trees, and the thickly layered brushstrokes of Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night are ingrained in the minds of many as an expression of the artist’s turbulent state-of-mind. Van Gogh’s canvas is indeed an exceptional work of art, not only in terms of its quality but also within the artist’s oeuvre, since in comparison to favored subjects like irises, sunflowers, or wheat fields, night landscapes are rare. Nevertheless, it is surprising that The Starry Night has become so well known. Van Gogh mentioned it briefly in his letters as a simple “study of night” or ”night effect.”

Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night , 1889, oil on canvas, 73.7 x 92.1 cm (The Museum of Modern Art; photo: Steven Zucker , CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

His brother Theo, manager of a Parisian art gallery and a gifted connoisseur of contemporary art, was unimpressed, telling Vincent, “I clearly sense what preoccupies you in the new canvases like the village in the moonlight… but I feel that the search for style takes away the real sentiment of things” (813, 22 October 1889). Although Theo van Gogh felt that the painting ultimately pushed style too far at the expense of true emotive substance, the work has become iconic of individualized expression in modern landscape painting.

Vincent van Gogh, Starry Night over the Rhone , 1888, oil on canvas, 72 x 92 cm ( Musée d’Orsay, Paris )

Technical challenges

Van Gogh had had the subject of a blue night sky dotted with yellow stars in mind for many months before he painted The Starry Night in late June or early July of 1889. It presented a few technical challenges he wished to confront—namely the use of contrasting color and the complications of painting en plein air (outdoors) at night—and he referenced it repeatedly in letters to family and friends as a promising if problematic theme. “A starry sky, for example, well – it’s a thing that I’d like to try to do,” Van Gogh confessed to the painter Emile Bernard in the spring of 1888, “but how to arrive at that unless I decide to work at home and from the imagination?” (596, 12 April 1888).

As an artist devoted to working whenever possible from prints and illustrations or outside in front of the landscape he was depicting, the idea of painting an invented scene from imagination troubled Van Gogh. When he did paint a first example of the full night sky in Starry Night over the Rhône (1888, oil on canvas, 72.5 x 92 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris), an image of the French city of Arles at night, the work was completed outdoors with the help of gas lamplight, but evidence suggests that his second Starry Night was created largely if not exclusively in the studio.

Following the dramatic end to his short-lived collaboration with the painter Paul Gauguin in Arles in 1888 and the infamous breakdown during which he mutilated part of his own ear, Van Gogh was ultimately hospitalized at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, an asylum and clinic for the mentally ill near the village of Saint-Rémy. During his convalescence there, Van Gogh was encouraged to paint, though he rarely ventured more than a few hundred yards from the asylum’s walls.

Saint-Paul-de-Mausole near Saint-Rémy, France (photo: Emdee , CC BY-SA 3.0)

Church (detail), Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night , 1889, oil on canvas, 73.7 x 92.1 cm. (The Museum of Modern Art, New York; photo: Steven Zucker , CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Besides his private room, from which he had a sweeping view of the mountain range of the Alpilles, he was also given a small studio for painting. Since this room did not look out upon the mountains but rather had a view of the asylum’s garden, it is assumed that Van Gogh composed The Starry Night using elements of a few previously completed works still stored in his studio, as well as aspects from imagination and memory. It has even been argued that the church’s spire in the village is somehow more Dutch in character and must have been painted as an amalgamation of several different church spires that van Gogh had depicted years earlier while living in the Netherlands.

Van Gogh also understood the painting to be an exercise in deliberate stylization, telling his brother, “These are exaggerations from the point of view of arrangement, their lines are contorted like those of ancient woodcuts” (805, c. 20 September 1889). Similar to his friends Bernard and Gauguin, van Gogh was experimenting with a style inspired in part by medieval woodcuts , with their thick outlines and simplified forms.

Stars (detail), Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night , 1889, oil on canvas, 73.7 x 92.1 cm (The Museum of Modern Art, New York; photo: Steven Zucker , CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The colors of the night sky

On the other hand, The Starry Night evidences Van Gogh’s extended observation of the night sky. After leaving Paris for more rural areas in southern France, Van Gogh was able to spend hours contemplating the stars without interference from gas or electric city street lights, which were increasingly in use by the late nineteenth century. “This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big” 777, c. 31 May – 6 June 1889). As he wrote to his sister Willemien van Gogh from Arles,

It often seems to me that the night is even more richly colored than the day, colored with the most intense violets, blues and greens. If you look carefully, you’ll see that some stars are lemony, others have a pink, green, forget-me-not blue glow. And without laboring the point, it’s clear to paint a starry sky it’s not nearly enough to put white spots on blue-black. (678, 14 September 1888)

Van Gogh followed his own advice, and his canvas demonstrates the wide variety of colors he perceived on clear nights.

Invention, remembrance and observation

Impasto and brush strokes (detail), Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night , 1889, oil on canvas, 73.7 x 92.1 cm (The Museum of Modern Art, New York; photo: Steven Zucker , CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Arguably, it is this rich mixture of invention, remembrance, and observation combined with Van Gogh’s use of simplified forms, thick impasto, and boldly contrasting colors that has made the work so compelling to subsequent generations of viewers as well as to other artists. Inspiring and encouraging others is precisely what Van Gogh sought to achieve with his night scenes. When Starry Night over the Rhône was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants, an important and influential venue for vanguard artists in Paris, in 1889, Vincent told Theo he hoped that it “might give others the idea of doing night effects better than I do.” The Starry Night , his own subsequent “night effect,” became a foundational image for Expressionism as well as perhaps the most famous painting in Van Gogh’s oeuvre.

Bibliography

This painting at MoMA

This painting at the Google Art Project

The Starry Night from MoMA Multimedia

This painting from MoMA Learning

Images for teaching and learning

Smarthistory images for teaching and learning:.

[flickr_tags user_id=”82032880@N00″ tags=”VGSN,”]

More Smarthistory images…

Cite this page

Your donations help make art history free and accessible to everyone!

Masterpiece Story: The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh

Valeria Kumekina 11 August 2024 min Read

Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night , 1889, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, NY, USA.

Recommended

European Art

Vincent van Gogh and Nature

Art State of Mind

Art Saved My Life! An Alternative Look at Vincent van Gogh’s Mental Health

Artist Stories

Vincent van Gogh’s Last Painting?

During his stay in the Saint-Rémy hospital in southern France, Vincent van Gogh created The Starry Night . It became one of his most recognizable paintings—The twinkling stars, bright moon, and sky in layered waves of blue possess emotional power captivating audiences for many years. This article will tell its story.

Historical and Cultural Context

Painted by Vincent van Gogh in 1889, The Starry Night emerged during a transformative period in European culture. Art movements like Impressionism , Post-Impressionism , Symbolism , and Art Nouveau rose to prominence in the wake of scientific advancements. Meanwhile, Artists began to infuse their work with symbolic depth and personal emotion, as opposed to following academic conventions.

Van Gogh, the now-illustrious Post-Impressionist, embodied this shift in artistic expression. His masterpiece, The Starry Night , captures the essence of Post-Impressionism with its vibrant colors and emotive brushwork. The work was produced during Van Gogh’s stay at the mental hospital in the Monastery of Saint-Paul de Mausole in Provence, after a fight with friend and Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin , followed by a nervous breakdown. Painted in one day based on the view from the window of Vincent’s room, The Starry Night presents a unique version of the world as seen through the artist’s eyes.

The Monastery of Saint-Paul de Mausole, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France. Wikipedia .

It is astonishing how Van Gogh wielded the emotional depth of artistic power and channeled his profound pain, loneliness, illness, and rejection into a wellspring of creativity. The confines of a hospital might break a person. Yet for Van Gogh, it was where he discovered within his imagination the resilience and fervor to create, where he got to express the nearly unbearable beauty of the world.

Interestingly, the depiction of the starry sky in The Starry Night isn’t Van Gogh’s only rendition. A year prior, in 1888, he painted Starry Night over the Rhone , yet The Starry Night remains notably more expressive.

Vincent van Gogh, Starry Night over the Rhone, 1888, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France.

Symbols and Meaning

The painting is a landscape with a village in the foreground, most of which is lit by the starry sky. The village likely stems from the artist’s imagination and recollections, as it resembles more of the Dutch architecture from Van Gogh’s homeland.

Additionally, the expansive sky is adorned with shimmering stars, with a radiant Venus positioned to the right of a cypress tree and the Moon gracing the upper right corner. Van Gogh rendered the sky with swirling strokes of blue in the shape of undulating waves. Perhaps he drew inspiration from Japanese woodblock prints, such as the iconic Great Wave off Kanagawa . After all, Van Gogh was an avid collector of Japanese prints, and some of his work demonstrates an influence from Japanese art.

Katsushika Hokusai, The Great Wave of Kanagawa, 1831, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, NY, USA.

Particular emphasis should be placed on the stars in “Starry Night.” These are not mere yellow dots but fiery orbs emanating radiance and light in all directions. Interestingly, their swirling patterns bear a striking resemblance to the depiction of the Whirlpool galaxy sketched by British astronomer William Parson in 1845.

Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night , 1889, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, NY, USA. Detail.

Sketch of M51 by William Parson in 1845. Wikipedia .

Detail of the Starry Night

The most luminous star in the painting  actually is the depiction of Venus.

Whirlpool Galaxy

William Parson made the sketch of the Whirlpool galaxy (M51) that was  classified as a spiral galaxy.

Waves and spirals in the Starry Night resemble with the Whirlpool galaxy and the Great Wave of Kanagawa.

The cypress tree in the foreground on the left extends majestically into the night sky. It carries significant symbolism deeply rooted in European culture. Historically, the cypress has been revered as one of the oldest trees on Earth, with Mediterranean civilizations incorporating it into rituals surrounding death due to its dark green needles, which symbolize sorrow and its towering, pyramid-like form evoking candles, which is likened to the souls of the departed.

Conversely, in early Christian art, cypresses were emblematic of faith and the hope for eternal life. Van Gogh’s fascination with cypresses, evident in his frequent mentions of them in his letters, is reflected in his numerous paintings featuring the tree’s distinctive curved lines. In The Starry Night, the cypress bridges the earthly realm and the enigmatic heavens, their vibrant stars and galaxies. It can be seen as a metaphor for the human soul set against the infinite expanse of space and the distant celestial bodies—yearning for connection.

Vincent van Gogh, Road with Cypress and Star , 1890, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands.

Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all. Vincent van Gogh Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, Arles, 11 August 1888

Voncet van Gogh, Self-Portrait , 1889, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., USA.

• 19th Century
• Vincent van Gogh

Get your daily dose of art

Click and follow us on Google News to stay updated all the time

We love art history and writing about it. Your support helps us to sustain DailyArt Magazine and keep it running.

DailyArt Magazine needs your support. Every contribution, however big or small, is very valuable for our future. Thanks to it, we will be able to sustain and grow the Magazine. Thank you for your help!

Valeria Kumekina

An art lover, a bookworm, a flaneur and a daydreamer from Moscow. She is obssesed with the period of la Belle Époque and Marcel Proust. She believes that The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain shaped her personality and probably she was born 100 years later.

Proofreader Yifan Xia

Masterpiece Story: The Harvesters by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

The Harvesters is a masterpiece of the Northern Renaissance. It is a visual contemplation Pieter Bruegel the Elder presented on human’s place...

James W Singer 22 September 2024

Masterpiece Story: Monomaniac of Envy by Théodore Géricault

Théodore Géricault (1791-1824) was one of the most influential artists of French Romanticism. In Monomaniac of Envy, the artist tries to paint the...

James W Singer 8 September 2024

Masterpiece Story: Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji by Hiroshige

Hokusai and his Wave have practically become symbols of Japan. It was first published in 1831 as a part of a larger series focusing on Mount Fuji, or...

Ledys Chemin 1 September 2024

Masterpiece Story: Malle Babbe by Frans Hals

Although Frans Hals’ Malle Babbe was always considered a tronie or a fictional character study, the portrait is based on a woman whom the Dutch...

Nicole Ganbold 8 September 2024

Never miss DailyArt Magazine's stories. Sign up and get your dose of art history delivered straight to your inbox!

Vincent van Gogh

ARTISTS (1853–1890); ZUNDERT, NETHERLANDS

The prolific yet short-lived career of Vincent van Gogh has captivated the art world nearly as much as his actual paintings have. From his birth in the Netherlands to his death in France—not to mention the infamous ear incident of 1888—the Dutch post-impressionist painter was a creative force of nature who took a little longer than other artists of the era to find his calling. Now, his life has been immortalized in movies, songs, and countless art exhibits, but, as is the case with so many great artists, van Gogh wasn't celebrated much while he was alive. Find out more about the fascinating man behind The Starry Night and Sunflowers below.

1. Most of Vincent van Gogh’s paintings were done in a single decade.

Vincent Willem van Gogh grew up in the Netherlands and joined an art firm called Goupil & Cie in The Hague in 1869, when he was just 16 years old. Four years later, Goupil & Cie sent him to deal art in London, but it was never a good fit—van Gogh couldn’t muster enthusiasm for the business side of art, and he was fired in 1876. After trying his hand at teaching and even preaching, he turned to what he’d soon realize was his true vocation: painting. Largely self-taught, van Gogh painted nearly 900 works between November 1881 and July 1890, when he died at age 37.

2. Vincent van Gogh painted The Starry Night in an asylum.

Van Gogh entered the Saint-Paul-de Mausole Asylum near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, after a mental breakdown in late 1888. He painted The Starry Night based on the view from his second-story bedroom window—with a few significant modifications. For one, he omitted the iron bars that were almost definitely fastened to the window, since he mentioned “the iron-barred window” in a letter to his brother Theo the previous month. And he added a lovely, moonlit town in the distance, which he wouldn’t have been able to see from his window. Some historians think he modeled the village on earlier sketches he had done of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, while others believe it was inspired by the Netherlands, where van Gogh was born.

3. Nine paintings from Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers series still exist.

Van Gogh painted two series of Sunflowers . He completed the first series—four paintings known as the Paris Sunflowers , which all depict the flowers lying on the ground—while living with Theo in Paris in the mid-1880s. Then, when he moved into a yellow house in Arles in 1888, he set to work on what’s now called the Arles Sunflowers , which display floral arrangements in vases. He planned to decorate the house with the sunflower paintings to please fellow painter Paul Gauguin, who would visit him there. Originally, van Gogh had painted seven Sunflowers in Arles, but one was destroyed in a fire during World War II, and another was lost after it was sold into a private collection.

4. Historians aren’t sure exactly why Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear.

Everybody agrees the infamous incident took place on December 23, 1888, while van Gogh was living in Arles, France, with fellow painter Paul Gauguin, but there are several theories as to why van Gogh took a knife or razor to his own ear that fateful night—as well as how much he cut off, and who was the recipient of history’s most revolting gift. The leading theory is that van Gogh was distraught after a quarrel with Gauguin, though others believe it was a reaction to learning his beloved brother Theo was getting married. Some even think it was Gauguin who did the slicing.

Also, while it’s possible that van Gogh only lopped off the lobe, his physician sketched an image that shows van Gogh’s entire ear is missing. Circumstances notwithstanding, van Gogh then brought his mutilated ear to a woman in a nearby brothel—long thought to be a prostitute, though recent evidence suggests she was likely a barmaid—and asked her to guard it carefully.

5. Vincent van Gogh died from a (likely) self-inflicted gunshot wound in France.

Van Gogh’s auricular accident of 1888 may be due to the fact that he was likely dealing with an undiagnosed health issue at the time. The particular mental and/or physical illness van Gogh suffered from isn’t known—though a doctor did once diagnose him with a form of epilepsy—but suggestions include dementia, hallucinatory psychosis, alcoholism, syphilis, turpentine poisoning, schizophrenia, manic-depressive disorder, borderline personality disorder, and more.

On July 27, 1890, while living in the French village Auvers-sur-Oise, van Gogh walked into a field and shot himself in the abdomen. He was able to make it back to the inn where he was staying, but he died from the wound two days later, with Theo by his side. He was just 37 years old. Some have theorized  van Gogh was shot by someone else, but it’s generally believed the artist was responsible for his own death.

6. Vincent van Gogh didn’t sell many paintings commercially while he was alive.

Van Gogh is a pretty classic example of someone who didn’t see commercial success during his lifetime. Apart from the 19 cityscapes of The Hague that his uncle commissioned him to make early in his career, van Gogh only sold a few paintings while he was alive—one to Parisian art dealer Julien Tanguy, one that Theo sold to a London gallery, and a third, The Red Vineyard , to the sister of van Gogh’s friend, Eugène Boch.

That said, van Gogh did often trade works to other artists in exchange for food or supplies, so his paintings definitely weren’t unknown or unappreciated. Much of van Gogh’s art went to Theo after his death, but Theo himself died just a year later. At that point, Theo’s widow, Johanna, began working to organize exhibitions and promote the art of her brother-in-law across Europe, which eventually led to more mainstream success for the already-deceased artist.

A Selection of Vincent van Gogh’s Paintings

• Still Life With Cabbage and Clogs (1881)
• Dunes (1882)
• Girl in the Woods (1882)
• Cottages (1883)
• Weaver Facing Left With Spinning Wheel (1884)
• Cart with Red and White Ox (1884)
• Vase With Honesty (1884-1885)
• Head of an Old Peasant Woman With White Cap (1884)
• The Potato Eaters (1885)
• Skull of a Skeleton With Burning Cigarette (1886)
• A Pair of Shoes (1886)
• Self-Portrait (1886)
• Japonaiserie: The Courtesan (1887)
• Sunflowers (1886-1888)
• The Sower (1888)
• Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin (1888)
• The Night Café (1888)
• The Café Terrace at Night (1888)
• Starry Night Over the Rhône (1888)
• Portrait of the Artist’s Mother (1888)
• Bedroom in Arles (1888)
• Paul Gauguin (Man in a Red Beret) (1888)
• Self-Portrait With Bandaged Ear (1889)
• Irises (1889)
• The Starry Night (1889)
• Cypresses (1889)
• Wheat Field With Reaper and Sun (1889)
• Olive Grove (1889)
• At Eternity’s Gate (1890)
• Houses in Auvers (1890)
• The Church at Auvers (1890)
• Portrait of Dr. Gachet (1890)

Notable Quotes by Vincent van Gogh

• “Success is sometimes the outcome of a whole string of failures.”
• “It’s certainly true that it is better to be fervent in spirit, even if one accordingly makes more mistakes, than narrow-minded and overly cautious.”
• “[The] great isn’t something accidental; it must be willed.”
• “The sight of the stars always makes me dream.”
• “Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music.”
• “The more I think about it the more I feel that there’s nothing more genuinely artistic than to love people.”
• “It is good to love as much as one can, for therein lies true strength, and he who loves much does much and is capable of much, and that which is done with love is well done.”
• “There is safety in the midst of danger. What would life be if we didn’t dare to take things in hand?”
• “I seek, I pursue, my heart is in it.”

• Become a member
• Locations, hours, and admission
• Map, audio, and more
• Where to start
• Visitor guidelines and policies
• Frequently asked questions
• Book a tour
• Restaurants
• Accessibility
• Visit MoMA PS1
• Current and upcoming exhibitions
• Exhibition history
• Events calendar
• Film series
• Performances
• Online courses
• Search moma.org Enter a term to search

Vincent van Gogh The Starry Night Saint Rémy, June 1889

• MoMA, Floor 5, 501 The Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Galleries

In creating this image of the night sky—dominated by the bright moon at right and Venus at center left—van Gogh heralded modern painting’s new embrace of mood, expression, symbol, and sentiment. Inspired by the view from his window at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy, in southern France, where the artist spent twelve months in 1889–90 seeking reprieve from his mental illnesses, The Starry Night (made in mid-June) is both an exercise in observation and a clear departure from it. The vision took place at night, yet the painting, among hundreds of artworks van Gogh made that year, was created in several sessions during the day, under entirely different atmospheric conditions. The picturesque village nestled below the hills was based on other views—it could not be seen from his window—and the cypress at left appears much closer than it was. And although certain features of the sky have been reconstructed as observed, the artist altered celestial shapes and added a sense of glow.

Van Gogh assigned an emotional language to night and nature that took them far from their actual appearances. Dominated by vivid blues and yellows applied with gestural verve and immediacy, The Starry Night also demonstrates how inseparable van Gogh’s vision was from the new procedures of painting he had devised, in which color and paint describe a world outside the artwork even as they telegraph their own status as, merely, color and paint.

Publication excerpt from MoMA Highlights: 375 Works from The Museum of Modern Art, New York (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2019)

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

Mention Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–1890) and one of the first things likely to come to many people’s 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 continue 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 that’s 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 .”

It was nature, and the people living closely to it, that first stirred van Gogh’s artistic inclinations. In this he was not alone. Landscapes remained a popular subject in late-nineteenth-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 Post-Impressionism , 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.”

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). The window to which he refers was in the Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy, 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 orbs—including the crescent moon to the far right, and Venus, the morning star, to the left of center—surrounded 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.”

The Starry Night is based on van Gogh’s 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.”

• Vincent van Gogh has 6 works online.
• There are 2,457  paintings online.

Installation views

We have identified these works in the following photos from our exhibition history.

Painting, Sculpture, Prints

May 24–Oct 15, 1944

The Museum Collection of Painting and Sculpture

Jun 20, 1945–Feb 13, 1946

2 other works identified

Designed for Children

Jun 11–Oct 6, 1946

XXVth Anniversary Exhibition: Paintings from the Museum Collection

Oct 19, 1954–Feb 6, 1955

Art in a Changing World: 1884–1964: Painting and Sculpture from the Museum Collection

May 27, 1964

1 other work identified

Selections from the Permanent Collection: Painting and Sculpture

May 17, 1984–Aug 4, 1992

3 other works identified

Selections from the Permanent Collection of Painting and Sculpture

Jul 1, 1993

MoMA2000, ModernStarts, Places: French Landscape, The Modernist Vision, 1880-1920

Oct 28, 1999–Mar 14, 2000

Collection Highlights

May 8–10, 2002

To Be Looked At: Painting and Sculpture from the Collection

Jul 3, 2002–Sep 6, 2004

6 other works identified

Painting & Sculpture II

Nov 20, 2004–Aug 5, 2015

Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night

Sep 21, 2008–Jan 5, 2009

501: 19th-Century Innovators

Fall 2019–Fall 2021

10 other works identified

517: Surrealist Objects

4 other works identified

11 other works identified

502: Lillie P. Bliss

Fall 2021 - Spring 2023

502: Cézanne, Gauguin, Seurat, Van Gogh

Mar 31, 2023–Mar 10, 2024

501: French Landscapes and Interiors

In 2018–19, MoMA collaborated with Google Arts & Culture Lab on a project using machine learning to identify artworks in installation photos. That project has concluded, and works are now being identified by MoMA staff.

If you notice an error, please contact us at [email protected] .

This work is included in the Provenance Research Project , which investigates the ownership history of works in MoMA's collection.

June - September 1889, Vincent van Gogh, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. September 1889 - January 1891, Theo van Gogh (1857-1891), Paris, acquired from his brother Vincent van Gogh. January 1891 - December 1900, Johanna (Jo) van Gogh-Bonger, Amsterdam, in trust for her son, Vincent Willem van Gogh, Amsterdam, inherited from Theo van Gogh. December 1900 - February 1901, Julien Leclercq, Paris, purchased through Jo van Gogh-Bonger. February 1901 - before July 1905, Claude-Emile Schuffenecker, Paris, acquired by exchange from Julien Leclercq. By July 1905 - March 1906, Jo van Gogh-Bonger, Amsterdam, reacquired from Claude-Emile Schuffenecker. [Oldenzeel Gallery, Rotterdam] 1906 - 1938, Georgette P. van Stolk (1867-1963), Rotterdam, purchased from/through Oldenzeel Gallery. 1938 - 1941, Paul Rosenberg, Paris/New York, purchased from Georgette P. van Stolk through Jacob-Baart de la Faille. 1941, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, acquired by exchange from Paul Rosenberg Gallery.

Provenance research is a work in progress, and is frequently updated with new information. If you have any questions or information to provide about the listed works , please email [email protected] or write to:

Provenance Research Project The Museum of Modern Art 11 West 53 Street New York, NY 10019

If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected] . Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected] . For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit https://www.moma.org/research/circulating-film .

If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected] . If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected] .

This record is a work in progress . If you have additional information or spotted an error, please send feedback to [email protected] .

Subscribe to our free e-letter!

The Starry Night Takes Center Stage in 'Van Gogh's Cypresses' at The Met

Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night , 1889. Oil on canvas.

Van Gogh’s Cypresses  at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is the first exhibition to give the spotlight to the trees in the works of Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890). With the iconic works The Starry Night and Wheat Field with Cypresses taking center stage in a presentation of some 40 works, the perspective asks you to forget the forest in favor of seeing the trees, in great detail. Timed with this exhibition, which runs through August 27, 2023, here is a brief history of The Starry Night.

Today, Vincent van Gogh stands as one of the most celebrated artists of the nineteenth century, and his painting, The Starry Night , completed in 1889, is not only one of his most famous works, but also one of the most famous paintings in the world. Yet van Gogh and his beloved painting were not always as famous as they are today. And even today, few people know a great deal about his artistic process. Most are satisfied to know his name and vague 'facts' about his mental health. 

Despite having gained a small measure of acclaim in the two years preceding his death, van Gogh lived most of his life in obscurity. Born in the Netherlands in 1853, van Gogh had been interested in art from a young age and worked as an art dealer for a few years in his early adulthood. However, he spent much of his adult life working in various professions before finally beginning his artistic career in 1880 when he enrolled in classes at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.

Though van Gogh only worked as an artist for a decade, he still produced more than 850 paintings and close to 1,300 drawings, sketches, and other works on paper. Yet, despite this large body of work, he only sold a handful of works before his death by suicide in 1890, when he was thirty-seven years old.

Vincent van Gogh,  Starry Night (Over the Rhône) , 1888. Oil on canvas.

After his death, van Gogh’s collection was left to his art-dealer brother, Theo, who had financially supported him. Theo intended to promote his elder brother’s work after Vincent’s death, but he died just six months after his brother. 

It was Theo’s widow, Jo van Gogh-Bonger—who inherited Vincent’s works and the letters the brothers had written to each other—who would successfully build Vincent van Gogh’s posthumous fame. In addition to publishing the brothers’ letters, van Gogh-Bonger loaned some of her brother-in-law’s paintings to museums for exhibitions while selling others—including The Starry Night .

Vincent van Gogh painted The Starry Nigh t in 1889 while he was staying in Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy, France, where he lived for a year following a breakdown and the mutilation of his left ear . Painted with oil on canvas, the artist attempted to capture the view from the window in his room.

The Monastery of Saint-Paul de Mausole

On the inspiration for The Starry Night , van Gogh wrote to Theo, “This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big.”

Though the painter preferred working from observation, he was not allowed to paint in his room, so he began painting the star he had seen in his studio without the view for reference, applying paint to the canvas directly from the tubes to create the image’s iconic thick lines and intense colors. The result was the dream-like image, which features wavy cypress trees in the foreground and glowing stars, a bright crescent moon, a swirling sky, rolling hills, and a village in the background. Some of the elements, such as the mountains in the distance and the existence of the village are true to the view van Gogh would have seen from his window. Meanwhile, other parts, such as the steeple on the church, are imagined.

While van Gogh painted the same view several times with each interpretation appearing different than the last, it is this celestial-inspired image that has captivated viewers for nearly a century. 

Upon its completion, van Gogh actually believed the painting to be a failure. He wrote to Theo, "All in all the only things I consider a little good in it are the Wheatfield, the Mountain, the Orchard, the Olive trees with the blue hills and the Portrait and the Entrance to the quarry, and the rest says nothing to me."

Vincent van Gogh,  Green Wheat Field with Cypress , 1889. Oil on canvas.

Created only a year before his death, The Starry Night  is one of the paintings Jo van Gogh-Bonger inherited from her husband. 

She sold it to poet Julien Leclercq, who then sold it to artist Claude-Emile Schuffenecker before van Gogh-Bonger reacquired it and sent it to the Oldenzeel Gallery in Rotterdam. The painting was then sold to Georgette P. van Stolk and then the Paul Rosenberg Gallery, from which the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired the work in 1941, where it has been housed since. In order to purchase the painting, the MoMA sold three paintings from the collection of Lillie P. Bliss—one of the museum’s founders—which was left to the museum after her death.

Since the MoMA’s acquisition of the painting, viewers have been transfixed by van Gogh’s interpretation of the nighttime view from his window in Saint-Rémy, and The Starry Night  now stands as one of the most famous works of Western art.

Peggy Carouthers

Peggy Carouthers is a writer, editor, and custom content manager based in California. She enjoys creative writing and learning about art and literature. She is passionate about connecting companies with audiences.

Latest News

Contemporary Art

Black Artists

Ancient Art

Women Artists

Indigenous Art

Photography

Latin American Art

LGBTQ Artists

Renaissance

Vincent van Gogh

Dutch Draftsman and Painter

Summary of Vincent van Gogh

The iconic tortured artist, Vincent Van Gogh strove to convey his emotional and spiritual state in each of his artworks. Although he sold only one painting during his lifetime, Van Gogh is now one of the most popular artists of all time. His canvases with densely laden, visible brushstrokes rendered in a bright, opulent palette emphasize Van Gogh's personal expression brought to life in paint. Each painting provides a direct sense of how the artist viewed each scene, interpreted through his eyes, mind, and heart. This radically idiosyncratic, emotionally evocative style has continued to affect artists and movements throughout the 20 th century and up to the present day, guaranteeing Van Gogh's importance far into the future.

Accomplishments

• Van Gogh's dedication to articulating the inner spirituality of man and nature led to a fusion of style and content that resulted in dramatic, imaginative, rhythmic, and emotional canvases that convey far more than the mere appearance of the subject.
• Although the source of much upset during his life, Van Gogh's mental instability provided the frenzied source for the emotional renderings of his surroundings and imbued each image with a deeper psychological reflection and resonance.
• Van Gogh's unstable personal temperament became synonymous with the romantic image of the tortured artist. His self-destructive talent was echoed in the lives of many artists in the 20 th century.
• Van Gogh used an impulsive, gestural application of paint and symbolic colors to express subjective emotions. These methods and practice came to define many subsequent modern movements from Fauvism to Abstract Expressionism .

The Life of Vincent van Gogh

Vincent expressed his life via his works. As he famously said, "real painters do not paint things as they are... they paint them as they themselves feel them to be."

Important Art by Vincent van Gogh

The Potato Eaters

This early canvas is considered Van Gogh's first masterpiece. Painted while living among the peasants and laborers in Nuenen in the Netherlands, Van Gogh strove to depict the people and their lives truthfully. Rendering the scene in a dull palette, he echoed the drab living conditions of the peasants and used ugly models to further iterate the effects manual labor had upon these workers. This effect is heightened by his use of loose brushstrokes to describe the faces and hands of the peasants as they huddle around the singular, small lantern, eating their meager meal of potatoes. Despite the evocative nature of the scene, the painting was not considered successful until after Van Gogh's death. At the time this work was painted, the Impressionists had dominated the Parisian avant-garde for over a decade with their light palettes. It is not surprising that Van Gogh's brother, Theo, found it impossible to sell paintings from this period in his brother's career. However, this work not only demonstrates Van Gogh's commitment to rendering emotionally and spiritually laden scenes in his art, but also established ideas that Van Gogh followed throughout his career.

Oil on canvas - The Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

The Courtesan (after Eisen)

While in Paris, Van Gogh was exposed to a myriad of artistic styles, including the Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints. These prints were only made available in the West in the mid-19 th century. Van Gogh collected works by Japanese ukiyo-e masters like Hiroshige and Hokusai and claimed these works were as important as works by European artists, like Rubens and Rembrandt. Van Gogh was inspired to create this particular painting by a reproduction of a print by Keisai Eisen that appeared on the May 1886 cover of the magazine Paris Illustré . Van Gogh enlarges Eisen's image of the courtesan, placing her in a contrasting, golden background bordered by a lush water garden based on the landscapes of other prints he owned. This particular garden is populated by frogs and cranes, both of which were allusions to prostitutes in French slang. While the stylistic features exhibited in this painting, in particular the strong, dark outlines and bright swaths of color, came to define Van Gogh's mature style, he also made the work his own. By working in paint rather than a woodblock print, Van Gogh was able to soften the work, relying on visible brushstrokes to lend dimension to the figure and her surroundings as well as creating a dynamic tension across the surface not present in the original prints.

Café Terrace At Night

This was one of the scenes Van Gogh painted during his stay in Arles and a painting where he used his powerful nocturnal background. Using contrasting colors and tones, Van Gogh achieved a luminous surface that pulses with an interior light, almost in defiance of the darkening sky. The lines of composition all point to the center of the work drawing the eye along the pavement as if the viewer is strolling the cobblestone streets. The café still exists today and is a "mecca" for van Gogh fans visiting the south of France. Describing this painting in a letter to his sister he wrote, "Here you have a night painting without black, with nothing but beautiful blue and violet and green and in this surrounding the illuminated area colors itself sulfur pale yellow and citron green. It amuses me enormously to paint the night right on the spot..." Painted on the street at night, Van Gogh recreated the setting directly from his observations, a practice inherited from the Impressionists. However, unlike the Impressionists, he did not record the scene merely as his eye observed it, but imbued the image with a spiritual and psychological tone that echoed his individual and personal reaction. The brushstrokes vibrate with the sense of excitement and pleasure Van Gogh experienced while painting this work.

Oil on canvas - Kröller-Muller Museum, Otterlo

Van Gogh's Sunflower series was intended to decorate the room that was set aside for Gauguin at the "Yellow House," his studio and apartment in Arles. The lush brushstrokes built up the texture of the sunflowers and Van Gogh employed a wide spectrum of yellows to describe the blossoms, due in part to recently invented pigments that made new colors and tonal nuances possible. Van Gogh used the sunny hues to express the entire lifespan of the flowers, from the full bloom in bright yellow to the wilting and dying blossoms rendered in melancholy ochre. The traditional painting of a vase of flowers is given new life through Van Gogh's experimentation with line and texture, infusing each sunflower with the fleeting nature of life, the brightness of the Provencal summer sun, as well as the artist's mindset.

Oil on canvas - The National Gallery, London

The Bedroom

Van Gogh's Bedroom depicts his living quarters at 2 Place Lamartine, Arles, known as the "Yellow House". It is one of his most well known images. His use of bold and vibrant colors to depict the off-kilter perspective of his room demonstrated his liberation from the muted palette and realistic renderings of the Dutch artistic tradition, as well as the pastels commonly used by the Impressionists. He labored over the subject matter, colors, and arrangements of this composition, writing many letters to Theo about it, "This time it's just simply my bedroom, only here color is to do everything, and giving by its simplification a grander style to things, is to be suggestive here of rest or of sleep in general. In a word, looking at the picture ought to rest the brain, or rather the imagination." While the bright yellows and blues might at first seem to echo a sense of disquiet, the bright hues call to mind a sunny summer day, evoking as sense of warmth and calm, as Van Gogh intended. This personal interpretation of a scene in which particular emotions and memories drive the composition and palette is a major contribution to modernist painting.

Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear

After cutting off a portion of his left earlobe during a manic episode while in Arles, Van Gogh painted Self Portrait with a Bandaged Ear while recuperating and reflecting on his illness. He believed that the act of painting would help restore balance to his life, demonstrating the important role that artistic creation held for him. The painting bears witness to the artist's renewed strength and control in his art, as the composition is rendered with uncharacteristic realism, where all his facial features are clearly modeled and careful attention is given to contrasting textures of skin, cloth, and wood. The artist depicts himself in front of an easel with a canvas that is largely blank and a Japanese print hung on the wall. The loose and expressive brushstrokes typical of Van Gogh are clearly visible; the marks are both choppy and sinuous, at times becoming soft and diffuse, creating a tension between boundaries that are otherwise clearly marked. The strong outlines of his coat and hat mimic the linear quality of the Japanese print behind the artist. At the same time, Van Gogh deployed the technique of impasto, or the continual layering of wet paint, to develop a richly textured surface, which furthers the depth and emotive force of the canvas. This self-portrait, one of many Van Gogh created during his career, has an intensity unparalleled in its time, which is elucidated in the frank manner in which the artist portrays his self-inflicted wound as well as the evocative way he renders the scene. By combining influences as diverse as the loose brushwork of the Impressionists and the strong outlines from Japanese woodblock printing, Van Gogh arrived at a truly unique mode of expression in his paintings.

Oil on canvas - The Courtauld Gallery, London

Starry Night

Starry Night is often considered to be Van Gogh's pinnacle achievement. Unlike most of his works, Starry Night was painted from memory, and not out in the landscape. The emphasis on interior, emotional life is clear in his swirling, tumultuous depiction of the sky - a radical departure from his previous, more naturalistic landscapes. Here, Van Gogh followed a strict principal of structure and composition in which the forms are distributed across the surface of the canvas in an exact order to create balance and tension amidst the swirling torsion of the cypress trees and the night sky. The result is a landscape rendered through curves and lines, its seeming chaos subverted by a rigorous formal arrangement. Evocative of the spirituality Van Gogh found in nature, Starry Night is famous for advancing the act of painting beyond the representation of the physical world.

Oil on canvas - The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Church at Auvers

After Van Gogh left the asylum at Saint-Remy in May 1890 he travelled north to Auvers, outside of Paris. Church at Auvers is one of the most well-known images from the last few months of Van Gogh's life. Imbuing the landscape with movement and emotion, he rendered the scene with a palette of vividly contrasting colors and brushstrokes that lead the viewer through painting. Van Gogh distorted and flattened out the architecture of the church and depicted it caught within its own shadow - which reflects his own complex relationship to spirituality and religion. Van Gogh conveys a sense that true spirituality is found in nature, not in the buildings of man. The continued influence of Japanese woodblock printing is clear in the thick dark outlines and the flat swaths of color of the roofs and landscape, while the visible brushstrokes of the Impressionists are elongated and emphasized. The use of the acidic tones and the darkness of the church alludes to the impending mental disquiet that would eventually erupt within Van Gogh and lead to his suicide. This sense of instability plagued Van Gogh throughout his life, infusing his works with a unique blend of charm and tension.

Oil on canvas - Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Paul-Ferdinand Gachet

Dr. Gachet was the homeopathic physician that treated Van Gogh after he was released from Saint-Remy. In the doctor, the artist found a personal connection, writing to his sister, "I have found a true friend in Dr. Gachet, something like another brother, so much do we resemble each other physically and also mentally." Van Gogh depicts Gachet seated at a red table, with two yellow books and foxglove in a vase near his elbow. The doctor gazes past the viewer, his eyes communicating a sense of inner sadness that reflects not only the doctor's state of mind, but Van Gogh's as well. Van Gogh focused the viewer's attention on the depiction of the doctor's expression by surrounding his face with the subtly varied blues of his jacket and the hills of the background. Van Gogh wrote to Gauguin that he desired to create a truly modern portrait, one that captured the "the heartbroken expression of our time." Rendering Gachet's expression through a blend of melancholy and gentility, Van Gogh created a portrait that has resonated with viewers since its creation. A recent owner, Ryoei Saito, even claimed he planned to have the painting cremated with him after his death, as he was so moved by the image. The intensity of emotion that Van Gogh poured into each brushstroke is what has made his work so compelling to viewers over the decades, inspiring countless artists and individuals.

Oil on canvas - Private Collection

Biography of Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh was born the second of six children into a religious Dutch Reformed Church family in the south of the Netherlands. His father, Theodorus Van Gogh, was a clergyman and his mother, Anna Cornelia Carbentus, was the daughter of a bookseller. Van Gogh exhibited unstable moods during his childhood, and showed no early inclination toward art-making, though he excelled at languages while attending two boarding schools. In 1868, he abandoned his studies and never successfully returned to formal schooling.

Early Training

In 1869, Van Gogh apprenticed at the headquarters of the international art dealers Goupil & Cie in Paris and eventually worked at the Hague branch of the firm. He was relatively successful as an art dealer and stayed with the firm for almost a decade. In 1872, Van Gogh began exchanging letters with his younger brother Theo. This correspondence continued through the end of Vincent's life. The following year, Theo himself became an art dealer, and Vincent was transferred to the London office of Goupil & Cie. Around this time, Vincent became depressed and turned to God.

After several transfers between London and Paris, Van Gogh was let go from his position at Goupil's and decided to pursue a life in the clergy. While living in southern Belgium as a poor preacher, he gave away his possessions to the local coal-miners until the church dismissed him because of his overly enthusiastic commitment to his faith. In 1880, Van Gogh decided he could be an artist and still remain in God's service, writing, "To try to understand the real significance of what the great artists, the serious masters, tell us in their masterpieces, that leads to God; one man wrote or told it in a book; another, in a picture." Van Gogh was still a pauper, but Theo sent him some money for survival. Theo financially supported his elder brother his entire career, as Vincent made virtually no money from making art.

A year later, in 1881, dire poverty motivated Van Gogh to move back home with his parents, where he taught himself to draw. He became infatuated with his cousin, Kee Vos-Stricker. His continued pursuit of her affection, despite utter rejection, eventually split the family. With the support of Theo, Van Gogh moved to the Hague, rented a studio, and studied under Anton Mauve - a leading member of the Hague School. Mauve introduced Van Gogh to the work of the French painter Jean-François Millet , who was renowned for depicting common laborers and peasants.

In January 1882, while wandering the streets of The Hague, Van Gogh encountered a young prostitute (who also worked as a seamstress and housecleaner) by the name of Clasina Maria Hoornik. He soon came to refer to her as Christien, which he then shortened to, simply, Sien. She was destitute, addicted to alcohol, pregnant, and had her five year-old daughter Maria Wilhelmina, in tow. Van Gogh took pity on her, and took her into his care for the next year and a half. This dismayed his friends and family, and some of his patrons and benefactors, including his cousin-in-law Anton Mauve, and art dealer Hermanus Tersteeg, abruptly withdrew their support for him.

While Sien's account of their relationship portrays it as one merely of convenience and benevolence, it seems that Van Gogh felt more of a connection, and even had plans to marry her. In return for his support, Sien (as well as her children and mother) modeled for over fifty of Van Gogh's works, such as his 1882 drawing Sorrow , in which Sien appears pregnant, and which the artist once called "the best figure I've drawn". It seems, however, that what Van Gogh valued about her was the challenging life she had faced (she had during her life, become pregnant four different times by four different men, all of whom had abandoned her, and two of the children had died during infancy). He once referred to her as "pockmarked" and "no longer beautiful”, and often depicted her frowning, and in difficult or unflattering situations. Sien and her family also appeared in Van Gogh’s 1883 series The Public Soup Kitchen .

Mature Period

In 1884, after moving to Nuenen, Netherlands, Van Gogh began drawing the weathered hands, heads, and other anatomical features of workers and the poor, determined to become a painter of peasant life like Millet. Although he found a professional calling, his personal life was in shambles. Van Gogh accused Theo of not trying hard enough to sell his paintings, to which Theo replied that Vincent's dark palette was out of vogue compared to the bold and bright style of the Impressionist artists that was popular. Suddenly, on March 26, 1885, their father died from a stroke, putting pressure on Van Gogh to have a successful career. Shortly afterward, he completed the Potato Eaters (1885), his first large-scale composition and great work.

Leaving the Netherlands for the last time, in 1885 Van Gogh enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. There he discovered the art of Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens , whose swirling forms and loose brushwork had a clear impact on the young artist's style. However, the rigidity of academicism of the school did not appeal to Van Gogh and he left for Paris the following year. He moved in with Theo in Montmartre - the artist's district in northern Paris - and studied with painter Fernand Cormon, who introduced the young artist to the Impressionists. The influence of artists such as Claude Monet , Camille Pissarro , Edgar Degas , and Georges Seurat , as well as pressure from Theo to sell paintings, motivated Van Gogh to adopt a lighter palette.

From 1886 to 1888, Van Gogh became acutely interested in Japanese prints and began to avidly study and collect them, even curating an exhibition of them at a Parisian restaurant. In late 1887, Van Gogh organized an exhibition that included his work and that of his colleagues Emile Bernard and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec , and in early 1888, he exhibited with the Neo-impressionists Georges Seurat and Paul Signac at the Salle de Repetition of the Theatre Libre d'Antoine.

Late Years and Death

The majority of Van Gogh's best-known works were produced during the final two years of his life. During the fall and winter of 1888, Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin lived and worked together in Arles in the south of France, where Van Gogh eventually rented four rooms at 2 Place Lamartine, which was dubbed the "Yellow House" for its citron hue. The move to Provence began as a plan for a new artist's community in Arles as alternative to Paris and came at a critical point in each of the artists' careers. While at the "Yellow House" Gauguin and Van Gogh worked closely together and developed a concept of color symbolic of inner emotion and not dependent upon nature. Despite enormous productivity, Van Gogh suffered from various bouts of mental instability, likely including epilepsy, psychotic episodes, delusions, and bipolar disorder. Gauguin left for Tahiti, partially as a means of escaping Van Gogh's increasingly erratic behavior. The artist slipped away after a particularly violent fight in which Van Gogh threatened Gauguin with a razor and then cut off part of his own left ear.

On May 8, 1889, reeling from his deteriorating mental condition, Van Gogh voluntarily committed himself into a psychiatric institution in Saint-Remy, near Arles. As the weeks passed, his mental well-being remained stable and he was allowed to resume painting. This period became one of his most productive. In the year spent at Saint-Remy, Van Gogh created over 100 works, including Starry Night (1889). The clinic and its garden became his main subjects, rendered in the dynamic brushstrokes and lush palettes typical of his mature period. On supervised walks, Van Gogh immersed himself in the experience of the natural surroundings, later recreating from memory the olive and cypress trees, irises, and other flora that populated the clinic's campus.

Shortly after leaving the clinic, Van Gogh moved north to Auvers-sur-Oise outside of Paris, to the care of a homeopathic doctor and amateur artist, Dr. Gachet. The doctor encouraged Van Gogh to paint as part of his recovery, and he happily obliged. He avidly documented his surroundings in Auvers, averaging roughly a painting a day over the last months of his life. However, after Theo disclosed his plan to go into business for himself and explained funds would be short for a while, Van Gogh's depression deepened sharply. On July 27, 1890, he wandered into a nearby wheat field and shot himself in the chest with a revolver. Although Van Gogh managed to struggle back to his room, his wounds were not treated properly and he died in bed two days later. Theo rushed to be at his brother's side during his last hours and reported that his final words were: "The sadness will last forever."

The Legacy of Vincent van Gogh

Clear examples of Van Gogh's wide influence can be seen throughout art history. The Fauves and the German Expressionists worked immediately after Van Gogh and adopted his subjective and spiritually inspired use of color. The Abstract Expressionists of the mid-20 th century made use of Van Gogh's technique of sweeping, expressive brushstrokes to indicate the artist's psychological and emotional state. Even the Neo-Expressionists of the 1980s, like Julian Schnabel and Eric Fischl , owe a debt to Van Gogh's expressive palette and brushwork. In popular culture, his life has inspired music and numerous films, including Vincente Minelli's Lust for Life (1956), which explores Van Gogh and Gauguin's volatile relationship. In his lifetime, Van Gogh created 900 paintings and made 1,100 drawings and sketches, but only sold one painting during his career. With no children of his own, most of Van Gogh's works were left to brother Theo.

Influences and Connections

Useful Resources on Vincent van Gogh

• Vincent Van Gogh: A Biography By Julius Meier-Graefe
• Stranger On The Earth: A Psychological Biography Of Vincent Van Gogh By Albert J. Lubin
• Vincent Van Gogh: Portrait of an Artist By Jan Greenberg, Sandra Jordan
• Dear Theo: The Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh By Irving Stone, Jean Stone
• Letters of Vincent Van Gogh Our Pick By Vincent Van Gogh, Mark Roskill
• Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings Our Pick By Ingo F. Walther, Rainer Metzger
• Van Gogh in Provence and Auvers By Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov
• Vincent's Colors By Vincent Van Gogh, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Vincent Van Gogh: The Drawings By Colta Ives, Susan Alyson Stein, Sjraar Van Heugten, Marije Vellekoop
• The Vincent Van Gogh Museum
• The Vincent Van Gogh Gallery Comprehensive image gallery of the artist's works
• Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters Our Pick Archives of Van Gogh's complete letters
• Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night Interactive website for the 2008 MoMA Exhibition
• Van Gogh's Ear and Modern Painting Our Pick By Adam Gopnik / The New Yorker / January 4, 2010
• Van Gogh's Night Visions By Paul Trachtman / Smithsonian Magazine / January 2009
• Nocturnal Van Gogh, Illuminating the Darkness Our Pick By Roberta Smith / The New York Times / September 18, 2008
• The Evolution of a Master Who Dreamed on Paper By Michael Kimmelman / The New York Times / October 14, 2005
• Where Van Gogh's Art Reached its Zenith By Grace Glueck / The New York Times / October 7, 1984
• Lust for Life Our Pick Book by Irving Stone
• Vincent & Theo Robert Altman's film about the brothers Van Gogh
• Don McLean's song 'Vincent (Starry Starry Night)'

Similar Art

Boulevard des Capucines (1873)

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte (1884-86)

Related artists.

Related Movements & Topics

Content compiled and written by The Art Story Contributors

Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors

Starry Night:10 Secrets of Vincent van Gogh Night Stars Painting

Widely hailed as Van Gogh's magnum opus, this Vincent van Gogh night stars painting depicts the view outside his sanatorium room window at night, although it was painted from memory during the day.

Starry Night depicts a dreamy interpretation of the artist's asylum room's sweeping view of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Though Van Gogh revisited this scene in his work on several occasions, "Starry Night" is the only nocturnal study of the view. Thus, in addition to descriptions evident in the myriad of letters he wrote to his brother, Theo, it offers a rare nighttime glimpse into what the artist saw while in isolation. "Through the iron-barred window I can make out a square of wheat in an enclosure," he wrote in May of 1889, "above which in the morning I see the sunrise in its glory."

An end-of-the-world cataclysm invades Van Gogh's Starry Night , one of apocalypse filled with melting aerolites and comets adrift. One has the impression that the artist has expelled his inner conflict onto a canvas. Everything here is brewed in a huge cosmic fusion. The sole exception is the village in the foreground with its architectural elements.

Several months after painting Starry Night , in Van Gogh's letters to his brother Theo, he 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."

The artist is looking down on a village from an imaginary viewpoint. It is framed by his newly-discovered motifs: at left a cypress towers skywards, at right a group of olive trees cluster into the cloud, and against the horizon run the undulating waves of the Alpilles. Van Gogh's treatment of his motifs prompts associations with fire, mist and the sea,and the elemental power of the natural scene combines with the intangible cosmic drama of the stars. The eternal natural universe cradles the human settlement idyllically, yet also surrounds it menacingly. The village itself might be anywhere, Saint-Remy or Nuenen recalled in a nocturnal mood. The church spire seems to be stretching up into the elements, at once an antenna and a lightning conductor, like some kind of provincial Eiffel Tower (the fascination of which was never far from van Gogh's nocturnes). Van Gogh's mountains and trees (particularly the cypresses) had hardly been discovered but they seemed to crackle with an electric charge. Confident that he had grasped their natural appearance, van Gogh set out to remake their image in the service of the symbolic. Together with the firmament, these landscape features are singing the praises of Creation in this painting.

Van Gogh described this night stars painting in his letter to his brother Theo:

I have done another landscape with olive trees, and a new study of the 'starry sky'. Although I have not seen the new pictures by Gauguin and Bernard, I am fairly certain that these two studies are similarly conceived. When you see them some time [...] I shall be able to give you a better idea of the things Gauguin, Bernard and I often used to talk about and occupy ourselves with than I can do in words; it is not a return to Romanticism or to religious ideas, no. But via Delacroixone can express more of Nature and the country, by means of colour and an individual drawing style, than might appear."

Van Gogh is making various points here. First, his synthesis of motifs was his first echo of work with Gauguin since his breakdown. The night stars scene (this is something that had only just become important to Van Gogh) offers the visual imagination its most distinctive, unique field of activity, since the lack of light requires the compensatory use of visual memory. Van Gogh used the memory method in his nocturnal scene; his discovery of the luminous power of darkness was a personal aesthetic discovery and needed no Gauguin as catalyst. Second, Van Gogh was drawing upon his long-lost model Eugene Delacroix again, and the principle of contrast; once he paused to reflect on what he had achieved in recent weeks he found his attention drawn back to the colourist techniques which he himself had developed so far. Third, he was searching for the essence of the landscape, its very being - a way of registering its symbolic power, its vitality, its flux and constancy, all in one.

Interpretations of this Van Gogh night stars painting are legion. Some claim it is a perfectly realistic account of the position of the stars in June 1889. This, needless to say, is perfectly possible. But the twisting, spiraling lines have nothing to do with the Northern Lights or the Milky Way or some spiral nebula or other. Others say that van Gogh was expressing a personal Gethsemane; they back this up by referring to the discussion of Christ on the Mount of Olives that he was currently engaged in, in his correspondence with Gauguin and Bernard. This too may be so; it is possible that premonitions of sufferings to come are articulated in the picture. But Biblical allegory is present throughout van Gogh's oeuvre, and he had no need of a special motif, least of all a starry sky, with all its associations of Arles and Utopian visions. Rather, van Gogh was trying to summarize; and his resume juxtaposed natural, scientific, philosophical and personal elements. Starry Night is an attempt to express a state of shock, and the cypresses, olive trees and mountains had acted as van Gogh's catalyst. More intensely, perhaps, than ever before, Van Gogh was interested in the material actuality of his motifs as much as in their symbolic dimensions.

There had been hills in Arles too, of course. But they entered his panoramic scenes as idyllic touches. His landscapes included the harvest, passing trains, isolated farmsteads and distant towns; and the hills were simply one more detail. In Arles, Van Gogh's dream had been of the harmony of things and of the spatial dimensions in which that harmony could be felt. None of that remained. The hills rose up steep and abruptly now, menacing, threatening to drag the lonesome soul down into vertiginous depths.

The Starry Night has risen to the peak of artistic achievements. Although Van Gogh sold only one painting in his whole life, "Starry Night" is an icon of modern art, the Mona Lisa for our time. As Leonardo da Vinci evoked a Renaissance ideal of serenity and self-control, Van Gogh defined how we see our own age - wracked with solitude and uncertainty. Since 1941 Starry Night has been in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

I don't know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream. ” - by Vincent van Gogh

10 Secrets of this Vincent van Gogh Night Stars Painting

1) Vincent Van Gogh painted "Starry Night" in 1889 from a room in the mental asylum at Saint-Remy where was recovering from mental illness and his ear amputation. 2) Van Gogh painted the view from his east-facing window in the asylum 21 times. Although the series depicts various times of day and night and different weather conditions, all the works include the line of rolling hills in the distance. None show the bars on the window of his room. 3) The artist considered "The Starry Night," which one day would rank among his most famous works, to be a failure, according to what he wrote to his brother. 4) Physicist Jose Luis Aragon compared the turbulent play of light and dark in such works as "Starry Night" to the mathematical expression of turbulence in such natural occurrences as as whirlpools and air streams. He found they matched very closely. Two other Van Gogh paintings from 1890, WheatField with Crows and Road with Cypress and Star also feature this mathematical parallel. Aragon suggests that since the artist created these particular artworks during periods of extreme mental agitation, Van Gogh was uniquely able to accurately communication that agitation using precise gradations of luminescence. 5) Analysts of "Starry Night" emphasize the symbolism of the stylized cypress tree in the foreground, linking it to death and Van Gogh's eventual suicide. However, the cypress also represents immortality. In the painting, the tree reaches into the sky, serving as a direct connection between the earth and the heavens. The artist may have been making more of a hopeful statement than many credit him with. This positive interpretation of the cypress symbolism hearkens back to a letter to his brother in which the artist likened death to a train that travels to the stars. 6) In his 2015 book, "Cosmographics," Michael Benson contends that the inspiration behind the distinctive swirls in the sky of Van Gogh's "Starry Night" is an 1845 drawing by astronomer William Parsons, Earl of Rosse, of the Whirlpool Galaxy. 7) Research has confirmed that the dominant morning star in the painting is actually Venus, which was in a similar position at the time Van Gogh was working on "Starry Night," and it would have shone brightly, just as Van Gogh painted it. 8) The moon in the painting would not have been in the crescent phase as shown at the time Van Gogh painted "Starry Night." In reality, it would have been gibbous, or about three-quarters full. 9) Pathologist Paul Wolf postulated in 2001 that the artist's fondness for yellow in paintings like "Starry Night" resulted from taking too much digitalis, a treatment in his day for epilepsy. 10) Where is Vincent van Gogh Starry Night painting? the Vincent van Gogh night stars painting has been in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City since 1941.

The Starry Night

Café terrace at night, vincent van gogh's letters, van gogh self portrait, the starry night over the rhone, wheatfield with crows, the night cafe, the potato eaters, the yellow house, almond blossom, the church at auvers, at eternity's gate by vincent van gogh, portrait of dr. gachet, portrait of the postman joseph roulin by vincent van gogh, self portrait with bandaged ear.

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh was one of the world’s greatest artists, with paintings such as ‘Starry Night’ and ‘Sunflowers,’ though he was unknown until after his death.

(1853-1890)

Who Was Vincent van Gogh?

Vincent van Gogh was a post-Impressionist painter whose work — notable for its beauty, emotion and color — highly influenced 20th-century art. He struggled with mental illness and remained poor and virtually unknown throughout his life.

Early Life and Family

Van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, in Groot-Zundert, Netherlands. Van Gogh’s father, Theodorus van Gogh, was an austere country minister, and his mother, Anna Cornelia Carbentus, was a moody artist whose love of nature, drawing and watercolors was transferred to her son.

Van Gogh was born exactly one year after his parents' first son, also named Vincent, was stillborn. At a young age — with his name and birthdate already etched on his dead brother's headstone — van Gogh was melancholy.

Theo van Gogh

The eldest of six living children, van Gogh had two younger brothers (Theo, who worked as an art dealer and supported his older brother’s art, and Cor) and three younger sisters (Anna, Elizabeth and Willemien).

Theo van Gogh would later play an important role in his older brother's life as a confidant, supporter and art dealer.

Early Life and Education

At age 15, van Gogh's family was struggling financially, and he was forced to leave school and go to work. He got a job at his Uncle Cornelis' art dealership, Goupil & Cie., a firm of art dealers in The Hague. By this time, van Gogh was fluent in French, German and English, as well as his native Dutch.

In June of 1873, van Gogh was transferred to the Groupil Gallery in London. There, he fell in love with English culture. He visited art galleries in his spare time, and also became a fan of the writings of Charles Dickens and George Eliot.

He also fell in love with his landlady's daughter, Eugenie Loyer. When she rejected his marriage proposal, van Gogh suffered a breakdown. He threw away all his books except for the Bible, and devoted his life to God. He became angry with people at work, telling customers not to buy the "worthless art," and was eventually fired.

Life as a Preacher

Van Gogh then taught in a Methodist boys' school, and also preached to the congregation. Although raised in a religious family, it wasn't until this time that he seriously began to consider devoting his life to the church

Hoping to become a minister, he prepared to take the entrance exam to the School of Theology in Amsterdam. After a year of studying diligently, he refused to take the Latin exams, calling Latin a "dead language" of poor people, and was subsequently denied entrance.

The same thing happened at the Church of Belgium: In the winter of 1878, van Gogh volunteered to move to an impoverished coal mine in the south of Belgium, a place where preachers were usually sent as punishment. He preached and ministered to the sick, and also drew pictures of the miners and their families, who called him "Christ of the Coal Mines."

The evangelical committees were not as pleased. They disagreed with van Gogh's lifestyle, which had begun to take on a tone of martyrdom. They refused to renew van Gogh's contract, and he was forced to find another occupation.

Finding Solace in Art

In the fall of 1880, van Gogh decided to move to Brussels and become an artist. Though he had no formal art training, his brother Theo offered to support van Gogh financially.

He began taking lessons on his own, studying books like Travaux des champs by Jean-François Millet and Cours de dessin by Charles Bargue.

Van Gogh's art helped him stay emotionally balanced. In 1885, he began work on what is considered to be his first masterpiece, "Potato Eaters." Theo, who by this time living in Paris, believed the painting would not be well-received in the French capital, where Impressionism had become the trend.

Nevertheless, van Gogh decided to move to Paris, and showed up at Theo's house uninvited. In March 1886, Theo welcomed his brother into his small apartment.

In Paris, van Gogh first saw Impressionist art, and he was inspired by the color and light. He began studying with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec , Camille Pissarro and others.

To save money, he and his friends posed for each other instead of hiring models. Van Gogh was passionate, and he argued with other painters about their works, alienating those who became tired of his bickering.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S VINCENT VAN GOGH FACT CARD

Van Gogh's love life was nothing short of disastrous: He was attracted to women in trouble, thinking he could help them. When he fell in love with his recently widowed cousin, Kate, she was repulsed and fled to her home in Amsterdam.

Van Gogh then moved to The Hague and fell in love with Clasina Maria Hoornik, an alcoholic prostitute. She became his companion, mistress and model.

When Hoornik went back to prostitution, van Gogh became utterly depressed. In 1882, his family threatened to cut off his money unless he left Hoornik and The Hague.

Van Gogh left in mid-September of that year to travel to Drenthe, a somewhat desolate district in the Netherlands. For the next six weeks, he lived a nomadic life, moving throughout the region while drawing and painting the landscape and its people.

Van Gogh became influenced by Japanese art and began studying Eastern philosophy to enhance his art and life. He dreamed of traveling there, but was told by Toulouse-Lautrec that the light in the village of Arles was just like the light in Japan.

In February 1888, van Gogh boarded a train to the south of France. He moved into a now-famous "yellow house" and spent his money on paint rather than food.

Vincent van Gogh completed more than 2,100 works, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings and sketches.

Several of his paintings now rank among the most expensive in the world; "Irises" sold for a record $53.9 million, and his "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" sold for $82.5 million. A few of van Gogh’s most well-known artworks include:

'Starry Night'

Van Gogh painted "The Starry Night" in the asylum where he was staying in Saint-Rémy, France, in 1889, the year before his death. “This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big,” he wrote to his brother Theo.

A combination of imagination, memory, emotion and observation, the oil painting on canvas depicts an expressive swirling night sky and a sleeping village, with a large flame-like cypress, thought to represent the bridge between life and death, looming in the foreground. The painting is currently housed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, NY.

'Sunflowers'

Van Gogh painted two series of sunflowers in Arles, France: four between August and September 1888 and one in January 1889; the versions and replicas are debated among art historians.

The oil paintings on canvas, which depict wilting yellow sunflowers in a vase, are now displayed at museums in London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Munich and Philadelphia.

In 1889, after entering an asylum in Saint-Rémy, France, van Gogh began painting Irises, working from the plants and flowers he found in the asylum's garden. Critics believe the painting was influenced by Japanese woodblock prints.

French critic Octave Mirbeau, the painting's first owner and an early supporter of Van Gogh, remarked, "How well he has understood the exquisite nature of flowers!"

'Self-Portrait'

Over the course of 10 years, van Gogh created more than 43 self-portraits as both paintings and drawings. "I am looking for a deeper likeness than that obtained by a photographer," he wrote to his sister.

"People say, and I am willing to believe it, that it is hard to know yourself. But it is not easy to paint yourself, either. The portraits painted by Rembrandt are more than a view of nature, they are more like a revelation,” he later wrote to his brother.

Van Gogh's self-portraits are now displayed in museums around the world, including in Washington, D.C., Paris, New York and Amsterdam.

Van Gogh's Ear

In December 1888, van Gogh was living on coffee, bread and absinthe in Arles, France, and he found himself feeling sick and strange.

Before long, it became apparent that in addition to suffering from physical illness, his psychological health was declining. Around this time, he is known to have sipped on turpentine and eaten paint.

His brother Theo was worried, and he offered Paul Gauguin money to go watch over Vincent in Arles. Within a month, van Gogh and Gauguin were arguing constantly, and one night, Gauguin walked out. Van Gogh followed him, and when Gauguin turned around, he saw van Gogh holding a razor in his hand.

Hours later, van Gogh went to the local brothel and paid for a prostitute named Rachel. With blood pouring from his hand, he offered her his ear, asking her to "keep this object carefully."

The police found van Gogh in his room the next morning, and admitted him to the Hôtel-Dieu hospital. Theo arrived on Christmas Day to see van Gogh, who was weak from blood loss and having violent seizures.

The doctors assured Theo that his brother would live and would be taken good care of, and on January 7, 1889, van Gogh was released from the hospital.

He remained, however, alone and depressed. For hope, he turned to painting and nature, but could not find peace and was hospitalized again. He would paint at the yellow house during the day and return to the hospital at night.

Van Gogh decided to move to the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence after the people of Arles signed a petition saying that he was dangerous.

On May 8, 1889, he began painting in the hospital gardens. In November 1889, he was invited to exhibit his paintings in Brussels. He sent six paintings, including "Irises" and "Starry Night."

On January 31, 1890, Theo and his wife, Johanna, gave birth to a boy and named him Vincent Willem van Gogh after Theo's brother. Around this time, Theo sold van Gogh's "The Red Vineyards" painting for 400 francs.

Also around this time, Dr. Paul Gachet, who lived in Auvers, about 20 miles north of Paris, agreed to take van Gogh as his patient. Van Gogh moved to Auvers and rented a room.

On July 27, 1890, Vincent van Gogh went out to paint in the morning carrying a loaded pistol and shot himself in the chest, but the bullet did not kill him. He was found bleeding in his room.

Van Gogh was distraught about his future because, in May of that year, his brother Theo had visited and spoke to him about needing to be stricter with his finances. Van Gogh took that to mean Theo was no longer interested in selling his art.

Van Gogh was taken to a nearby hospital and his doctors sent for Theo, who arrived to find his brother sitting up in bed and smoking a pipe. They spent the next couple of days talking together, and then van Gogh asked Theo to take him home.

On July 29, 1890, Vincent van Gogh died in the arms of his brother Theo. He was only 37 years old.

Theo, who was suffering from syphilis and weakened by his brother's death, died six months after his brother in a Dutch asylum. He was buried in Utrecht, but in 1914 Theo's wife, Johanna, who was a dedicated supporter of van Gogh's works, had Theo's body reburied in the Auvers cemetery next to Vincent.

Theo's wife Johanna then collected as many of van Gogh's paintings as she could, but discovered that many had been destroyed or lost, as van Gogh's own mother had thrown away crates full of his art.

On March 17, 1901, 71 of van Gogh's paintings were displayed at a show in Paris, and his fame grew enormously. His mother lived long enough to see her son hailed as an artistic genius. Today, Vincent van Gogh is considered one of the greatest artists in human history.

Van Gogh Museum

In 1973, the Van Gogh Museum opened its doors in Amsterdam to make the works of Vincent van Gogh accessible to the public. The museum houses more than 200 van Gogh paintings, 500 drawings and 750 written documents including letters to Vincent’s brother Theo. It features self-portraits, “The Potato Eaters,” “The Bedroom” and “Sunflowers.”

In September 2013, the museum discovered and unveiled a van Gogh painting of a landscape entitled "Sunset at Montmajour.” Before coming under the possession of the Van Gogh Museum, a Norwegian industrialist owned the painting and stored it away in his attic, having thought that it wasn't authentic.

The painting is believed to have been created by van Gogh in 1888 — around the same time that his artwork "Sunflowers" was made — just two years before his death.

Watch "Vincent Van Gogh: A Stroke of Genius" on HISTORY Vault

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Vincent van Gogh
• Birth Year: 1853
• Birth date: March 30, 1853
• Birth City: Zundert
• Birth Country: Netherlands
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Vincent van Gogh was one of the world’s greatest artists, with paintings such as ‘Starry Night’ and ‘Sunflowers,’ though he was unknown until after his death.
• Astrological Sign: Aries
• Brussels Academy
• Nacionalities
• Interesting Facts
• Some of van Gogh's most famous works include "Starry Night," "Irises," and "Sunflowers."
• In a moment of instability, Vincent Van Gogh cut off his ear and offered it to a prostitute.
• Van Gogh died in France at age 37 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
• Death Year: 1890
• Death date: July 29, 1890
• Death City: Auvers-sur-Oise
• Death Country: France

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Vincent van Gogh Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/artists/vincent-van-gogh
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: March 4, 2020
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• As for me, I am rather often uneasy in my mind, because I think that my life has not been calm enough; all those bitter disappointments, adversities, changes keep me from developing fully and naturally in my artistic career.
• I am a fanatic! I feel a power within me…a fire that I may not quench, but must keep ablaze.
• I get very cross when people tell me that it is dangerous to put out to sea. There is safety in the very heart of danger.
• I want to paint what I feel, and feel what I paint.
• As my work is, so am I.
• The love of art is the undoing of true love.
• When one has fire within oneself, one cannot keep bottling [it] up—better to burn than to burst. What is in will out.
• For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.
• I do not say that my work is good, but it's the least bad that I can do. All the rest, relations with people, is very secondary, because I have no talent for that. I can't help it.
• What is wrought in sorrow lives for all time.
• What I draw, I see clearly. In these [drawings] I can talk with enthusiasm. I have found a voice.
• Enjoy yourself too much rather than too little, and don't take art or love too seriously.
• But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.

Famous Painters

Frida Kahlo

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Georgia O'Keeffe

11 Notable Artists from the Harlem Renaissance

Fernando Botero

Gustav Klimt

The Surreal Romance of Salvador and Gala Dalí

Salvador Dalí

• History & Society
• Science & Tech
• Biographies
• Animals & Nature
• Geography & Travel
• Arts & Culture
• Games & Quizzes
• On This Day
• One Good Fact
• New Articles
• Lifestyles & Social Issues
• Philosophy & Religion
• Politics, Law & Government
• World History
• Health & Medicine
• Browse Biographies
• Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
• Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
• Environment
• Fossils & Geologic Time
• Entertainment & Pop Culture
• Sports & Recreation
• Visual Arts
• Demystified
• Image Galleries
• Infographics
• Top Questions
• Britannica Kids
• Saving Earth
• Space Next 50
• Student Center
• Introduction & Top Questions
• The productive decade

Who was Vincent van Gogh?

Vincent van Gogh

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

• The Met - Biography of Vincent van Gogh
• Artnet - Biography of Vincent van Gogh
• Art Encyclopedia - Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)
• World History Encyclopedia - Biography of Vincent van Gogh
• Art in Context - Vincent van Gogh - The Art and Life of Painter Vincent Willem van Gogh
• Web Gallery of Art - Biography of Vincent van Gogh
• The Art Story - Biography of Vincent Van Gogh
• Vincent van Gogh - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• Vincent van Gogh - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

Vincent van Gogh was a Dutch painter, generally considered to be the greatest after  Rembrandt van Rijn , and one of the greatest of the  Post-Impressionists . He sold only one artwork during his life, but in the century after his death he became perhaps the most recognized painter of all time.

What did Vincent van Gogh accomplish?

During his 10-year artistic career, Vincent van Gogh created a vivid personal style, noted for its striking colour, emphatic brushwork, and contoured forms. His achievement is all the more remarkable for the brevity of his career and considering the poverty and mental illness that dogged him.

What were Vincent van Gogh’s jobs?

Vincent van Gogh’s career as an artist was extremely short, lasting only the 10 years from 1880 to 1890. Before that he had various occupations, including art dealer , language teacher, lay preacher, bookseller, and missionary worker.

How was Vincent van Gogh influential?

The work of Vincent van Gogh exerted a powerful influence on the development of much modern painting, notably Expressionism , in particular on the works of the  Fauve  painters,  Chaim Soutine , and the German Expressionists. 

What is Vincent van Gogh remembered for?

Vincent van Gogh is remembered for both the striking colour, emphatic brushwork, and contoured forms of his art and for the turmoil of his personal life. In part because of his extensive published letters, van Gogh has been mythologized in the popular imagination as the quintessential tortured artist.

Recent News

Vincent van Gogh (born March 30, 1853, Zundert, Netherlands—died July 29, 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris, France) was a Dutch painter, generally considered the greatest after Rembrandt van Rijn , and one of the greatest of the Post-Impressionists . The striking color, emphatic brushwork, and contoured forms of his work powerfully influenced the current of Expressionism in modern art. Van Gogh’s art became astoundingly popular after his death, especially in the late 20th century, when his work sold for record-breaking sums at auctions around the world and was featured in blockbuster touring exhibitions. In part because of his extensive published letters, van Gogh has also been mythologized in the popular imagination as the quintessential tortured artist.

Van Gogh, the eldest of six children of a Protestant pastor, was born and reared in a small village in the Brabant region of the southern Netherlands. He was a quiet, self-contained youth , spending his free time wandering the countryside to observe nature. At 16 he was apprenticed to The Hague branch of the art dealers Goupil and Co., of which his uncle was a partner.

Van Gogh worked for Goupil in London from 1873 to May 1875 and in Paris from that date until April 1876. Daily contact with works of art aroused his artistic sensibility, and he soon formed a taste for Rembrandt , Frans Hals , and other Dutch masters, although his preference was for two contemporary French painters, Jean-François Millet and Camille Corot , whose influence was to last throughout his life. Van Gogh disliked art dealing. Moreover, his approach to life darkened when his love was rejected by a London girl in 1874. His burning desire for human affection thwarted, he became increasingly solitary. He worked as a language teacher and lay preacher in England and, in 1877, worked for a bookseller in Dordrecht , Netherlands . Impelled by a longing to serve humanity, he envisaged entering the ministry and took up theology; however, he abandoned this project in 1878 for short-term training as an evangelist in Brussels . A conflict with authority ensued when he disputed the orthodox doctrinal approach. Failing to get an appointment after three months, he left to do missionary work among the impoverished population of the Borinage , a coal-mining region in southwestern Belgium. There, in the winter of 1879–80, he experienced the first great spiritual crisis of his life. Living among the poor, he gave away all his worldly goods in an impassioned moment; he was thereupon dismissed by church authorities for a too-literal interpretation of Christian teaching.

Penniless and feeling that his faith was destroyed, he sank into despair and withdrew from everyone. “They think I’m a madman,” he told an acquaintance, “because I wanted to be a true Christian. They turned me out like a dog, saying that I was causing a scandal.” It was then that van Gogh began to draw seriously, thereby discovering in 1880 his true vocation as an artist. Van Gogh decided that his mission from then on would be to bring consolation to humanity through art. “I want to give the wretched a brotherly message,” he explained to his brother Theo. “When I sign [my paintings] ‘Vincent,’ it is as one of them.” This realization of his creative powers restored his self-confidence.

This page is currently unavailable. Thank you for your understanding and patience.

Planning to visit The Met Fifth Avenue or The Met Cloisters? Same-day tickets can be purchased in person during regular hours. Both locations are closed on Wednesdays.

In the meantime, if you have any questions regarding Membership, you may call 212-570-3753 or email [email protected] .

Other questions? Email [email protected] .

Plan Your Visit

Exhibitions

Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” Hides Atmospheric Physics

The legendary painting. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons , Public domain)

Vincent van Gogh is arguably modern history's most well-known artist. From cutting off his ear to painting with swirling visible brushstrokes, Van Gogh was surprising in many ways. His artistic forays evolved over time as he produced well over 1,500 works . His most famous work is The Starry Night , which features a twirling night sky in vivid brushstrokes above cypress trees. This night sky has long fascinated art lovers, but it has recently impressed atmospheric scientists too. In a new paper , researchers announced that the painting's sky surprisingly reflects a deep understanding of atmospheric physics.

The team of scientists studied the painting by comparing the 14 largest sky “movements” with scientific models for “cascading” energy through the atmosphere. “The scale of the paint strokes played a crucial role,” paper author Yongxiang Huang said in a statement . “With a high-resolution digital picture, we were able to measure precisely the typical size of the brushstrokes and compare these to the scales expected from turbulence theories.”

The pattern of spirals mimics Kolmogorov’s law , which describes the fluid dynamics of how turbulence dissipates. By comparing the colors and lightness of the brushstrokes, they also confirmed that they reflect Batchelor’s scaling. This is another measurement of dissipation.

So how did Van Gogh manage to paint atmospheric physics? “It reveals a deep and intuitive understanding of natural phenomena,” Huang noted. “Van Gogh’s precise representation of turbulence might be from studying the movement of clouds and the atmosphere or an innate sense of how to capture the dynamism of the sky.”

The artist was deeply attuned to the movements of nature, as seen in his many paintings and sketches of bending trees and flowing fields. While the turbulence captured by his brush mirrored the emotional turbulence that appeared throughout his life, it adds to the beauty of his work and its scientific value.

Atmospheric scientists discovered that the sky movement in Van Gogh's brushwork mimics modern scientific theories of turbulence.

The Starry Night, and 1898 sketch. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons , Public domain)

h/t: [ Popular Mechanics ]

Related Articles:

After Being Postponed for 120 Years, Monet’s ‘Thames’ Paintings Will Finally Exhibit in London

https://mymodernmet.com/claude-monet-1915/

Rare Footage From 1915 Captures Claude Monet Painting at His Gardens in Giverny

Who Was Auguste Rodin? Get To Know the Famous Sculptor of ‘The Thinker’

Get Our Weekly Newsletter

Learn from top artists.

Related Articles

Sponsored Content

More on my modern met.

My Modern Met

Celebrating creativity and promoting a positive culture by spotlighting the best sides of humanity—from the lighthearted and fun to the thought-provoking and enlightening.

• Photography
• Architecture
• Environment

Frequently Asked Question

Where is ‘The Starry Night’?

Detail of: Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night , 1889.

Van Gogh's rolling night sky full of bright stars is probably one of the world's most famous artworks.

The Starry Night's home is at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. But how did it get there?

Photo of the young Jo van Gogh - Bonger.

Vincent sold only a handful of artworks during his lifetime. When Vincent passed away, his brother Theo inherited all the remaining ones. Yet when Theo died shortly after, they all fell into the hands of Theo's wife Jo and their only son.

Jo van Gogh Bonger (centre) in her living room, surrounded by paintings by Van Gogh. On the left of the photo is her son Vincent, on the right her second husband Johan Cohen Gosschalk. Photo: Bernard Eilers, 1910-1911

Scroll for more

In order to establish Vincent's recognition in the art world, Jo strategically sold artworks to influential art collectors or well-known museums.

One day, Jo sold The Starry Night to Georgette van Stolk in Rotterdam. Then in 1941, MoMA acquired it from her. It was the first Van Gogh to enter a New York museum collection.

Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' contains surprisingly accurate physics — suggesting he understood the hidden 'dynamism of the sky'

A new analysis of the brushstrokes and colors in Vincent van Gogh's famous painting Starry Night reveals a striking similarity to "hidden turbulence" in Earth's atmosphere, suggesting the iconic artist had a surprisingly detailed understanding of natural processes.

New research suggests there is more to Vincent van Gogh's famous painting Starry Night than meets the eye. Its turbulent, swirling sky shares many characteristics with invisible fluid dynamics processes that occur in our real-world atmosphere, an analysis of the brushstrokes and colors in the painting reveals.

Van Gogh painted Starry Night in June 1889, while he was living in an asylum in southern France as he recovered from a mental breakdown that resulted in the self-mutilation of his left ear around six months earlier. The oil-on-canvas masterpiece shows the view of a swirling sky from the window of the painter's room with an imaginary village added in the foreground, and is famous for its detailed brushstrokes and use of bright hues.

The painting recently caught the eye of researchers in China who recognized some similarities between its spiraling shapes and the patterns seen in fluid dynamics — the study of the movements of fluids and gases. This inspired them to study the painting in greater detail.

In the new study, published Tuesday (Sept. 17) in the journal Physics of Fluids , the researchers analyzed the minute details of the brushstrokes and colors used in the paintings and found that these components both shared strong similarities with the "hidden turbulence" of gases in the atmosphere.

"It reveals a deep and intuitive understanding of natural phenomena," study co-author Yongxiang Huang , a fluid dynamics expert and oceanographer at Xiamen University in China, said in a statement . "Van Gogh’s precise representation of turbulence might be from studying the movement of clouds and the atmosphere or an innate sense of how to capture the dynamism of the sky."

Related: Hidden Van Gogh self-portrait discovered under 'peasant woman' painting

The researchers closely analyzed the 14 "whirls" in the painting's sky. Overall, these shapes generally followed patterns predicted by Kolmogorov’s law — a physical rule that describes how atmospheric gas moves at different scales depending on inertial energy. In the painting, that inertial energy is represented by the intensity of the yellows in the painting, the researchers wrote.

Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now

Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox.

When the researchers looked more closely at the whirls, they also found the spacing and weight of individual brushstrokes revealed an alignment with Batchelor's scaling, which describes how small eddies and droplets can be before they dissipate in a turbulent fluid.

However, Kolmogorov and Batchelor developed their laws decades after the artist died. So, the authors wrote, Van Gogh was definitely not using fluid dynamics knowledge, but likely drawing on general observations of the sky or other naturally occurring spirals as inspiration. Similarly, the connection between energy and the color yellow is almost certainly a coincidence, the authors noted.

But it's clear that Starry Night evokes processes that crop up in the natural world.

— Monet and Turner's atmospheric landscapes actually depicted air pollution, new study finds

— Picasso painting found hidden beneath his famous 'Still Life'

— Hidden 'madman' message on 'The Scream' traced back to Munch himself

In 2020, researchers named a new species of peacock spider after the painting due to a similarity between van Gogh's colorful swirls and luminous dots on the arachnid’s rear end. And in 2021, microbiologists also noticed a striking similarity between the painting's iconic swirls and swarming colonies of mutated bacteria .

In May this year, new photos of Jupiter from NASA 's Juno probe also showed intense storm swirls in the planet's northern hemisphere which looked very similar to van Gogh's newly analyzed brushstrokes . These swirling clouds were also linked to "turbulent patterns" in Jupiter's atmosphere, similar to those on Earth.

Harry is a U.K.-based senior staff writer at Live Science. He studied marine biology at the University of Exeter before training to become a journalist. He covers a wide range of topics including space exploration, planetary science, space weather, climate change, animal behavior, evolution and paleontology. His feature on the upcoming solar maximum was shortlisted in the "top scoop" category at the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) Awards for Excellence in 2023. 

Live Science x HowTheLightGetsIn — Get discounted tickets to the world’s largest ideas and music festival

'We're meeting people where they are': Graphic novels can help boost diversity in STEM, says MIT's Ritu Raman

At-home flu vaccine approved by FDA — what to know

Most Popular

• 2 Mysterious 'horseman' from lead coffin unearthed in Notre Dame Cathedral finally identified
• 3 Monkey study reveals science behind 'choking under pressure'
• 4 Will language face a dystopian future? How 'Future of Language' author Philip Seargeant thinks AI will shape our communication
• 5 Bizarre polar vortex over Antarctica delayed ozone hole opening, scientists say

Scientists Found Hidden Physics Inside Van Gogh’s Starry Night

The legendary masterpiece is much more than just a beautiful painting.

• Scientists recently analyzed Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night to see how well its famous swirls matched up with known atmospheric physics.
• After analysis, they found that not only did the shapes match up with our current ideas of atmospheric turbulence, but the colors used throughout the piece communicated fairly accurate physics at a remarkably small scale.
• Researchers think that Van Gogh could have come to understand these movements by “studying the movement of clouds and the atmosphere, or that he could have just had “an innate sense of how to capture the dynamism of the sky.”

The swirling colors and flowing brushstrokes of Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night have secured the painting (and its artist) a place among the all-time greats. As a piece of art, Starry Night is undeniably beautiful, but beauty alone is often not enough to keep a painting so cemented in the minds and hearts of the public.

Beyond just being beautiful, Starry Night somehow manages to capture the feeling of a clear night sky . Capturing feeling may be the whole point of impressionism—Van Gogh is himself most often labeled a post-impressionist, a style separate from true impressionism that nonetheless uses many impressionist techniques—but Starry Night does a singular job at managing it. Something about those particular swirls of paint just… feels like the night.

Enough so that scientists began to wonder: how closely do those famous swirls actually mimic atmospheric physics ? After significant analysis, a team of researchers from China and France have released a new paper, published today in the journal Physics of Fluids, exploring exactly that.

Specifically, the team wanted to look at how closely Van Gogh’s brush strokes mirrored atmospheric turbulence—disturbances in the atmosphere, often caused by differences in temperature , that churn things up and change the trajectory of everything from water vapor to photons.

It turns out, as unlikely as it may seem, that Van Gogh likely had a fairly complex understanding of how our atmosphere behaved. The analysis “reveals a deep and intuitive understanding of natural phenomena ,” Yongxiang Huang, one of the authors of the study, said in a press release .

To reach their conclusion, the team compared the 14 main shapes of the painting to a concept in atmospheric physics known as Kolmogorov’s theory. It’s a sub-idea that helps narrow the concept of an “ energy cascade”—the way that energy transfers from large scale patterns to smaller ones. Kolmogorov’s theory , at a very basic level, dictates that the direction of the first main swirl has less and less of an impact on the other branching swirls the smaller and smaller they get.

But they didn’t just compare shape to theory. Instead, according to the press release, the team also used “relative brightness, or luminance, of the varying paint colors as a stand-in for the kinetic energy of physical movement” in order to complete a more in-depth analysis of the piece.

And on that level, the team found that there was even more physical alignment to be found. Specifically, they found that the relative brightnesses of colors used in the piece aligned well with a framework that describes movement and energy transfer on the smallest of scales known as Batchelor’s scaling.

Seeing both Batchelor’s scaling and Kolmogorov’s theory brought to life in the piece was extremely exciting for the scientists behind the study, as seeing both together in the atmosphere is rare.

It’s perhaps not surprising that scientists studying atmospheric physics would look at a master work of art and see… well… atmospheric physics. But as for how Van Gogh would have come to have the understanding necessary to paint this way, Huang stated that his “precise representation of turbulence might be from studying the movement of clouds and the atmosphere or an innate sense of how to capture the dynamism of the sky.”

Either way, capturing this movement remains a remarkable feat, especially considering the painting is from 1889. And it’s yet another reason to love the breathtaking swirls of Starry Night .

Jackie is a writer and editor from Pennsylvania. She's especially fond of writing about space and physics, and loves sharing the weird wonders of the universe with anyone who wants to listen. She is supervised in her home office by her two cats.

Mega El Niño Kickstarted Earth's Worst Extinction

Scientists Find the Goldilocks of Wood Types

This 650-Foot Megatsunami Is Only the Beginning

Ocean Explorers Find Massive Underwater Mountain

Scientists Spot Plasma Bubbles Above the Pyramids

Man Finds Possible Ancient Crater on Google Maps

NASA Finds Earth’s Elusive Third Energy Field

Areas In Mantle Are Slowing Down Seismic Waves

A New Study Unravels a Major Microfossil Mystery

Can Some Electroshock Therapy Save Our Beaches?

Scientists Find Incredible Proof of Snowball Earth

A ‘Mercury Bomb' Is Looming in a Warming Arctic

Seek Inspiration From The Best At A “Neon Brush Van Gogh” Painting Workshop

Who better to influence your next masterpiece than one of the greatest artists in history? Recreate Van Gogh's The Starry Night with tickets to Neon Brush!

Simply flying across the pond to see van Gogh’s original piece on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York is not an everyday option for most of us. And even if beholding the ultramarine and cobalt blue swirls, the yellow blobs in the sky, and the curvy black tree in person were possible, it would only be for a fleeting moment. Well, “Neon Brush Van Gogh” in London has a better idea— paint it yourself ! And do so under ultraviolet lights for a retro twist on the sip and paint experience.

Head to The Joiner on Worship , a multi-purpose pub, on selected dates over the coming months for a painting session centering on the famous Dutch painter’s Post-Impressionist artwork. Between using paints that glow in the dark, a great playlist , and drinks being available for purchase at the venue, the event is a far cry from the Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy, France where van Gogh thickly layered oil paint on the canvas. It is a unique way to understand the artist while discovering your creative self.

What is “Neon Brush Van Gogh”?

Basically, it’s a 90-minute painting experience but with an ultraviolet twist. While some sip and paint sessions, including the original Neon Brush London , encourage attendees to come up with their own ideas, this fun-filled workshop is about van Gogh’s The Starry Night . After all, sometimes it’s hard to think on the spot, and having a template or example to follow can be a real relief.

Tell me more about this sip and paint experience

Don’t worry, prior knowledge of the impasto technique or having already read Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith ‘s authoritative biography is not a prerequisite. Everyone is invited to enter a welcoming space and unwind while bringing van Gogh’s mesmerising painting to life with an added personal touch. An expert instructor is also there to provide tips and tricks during the workshop.

Who is “Neon Brush Van Gogh” for?

It’s for absolutely everyone willing to pick up the paintbrush and express their take on The Starry Night. And if Vincent van Gogh just so happens to be one of your favourite artists, that would be a bonus too! From the perfect after-work activity with your workmates to an unforgettable way to spend time with friends and family , Neon Brush is always a great idea.

On different dates over the coming months, you can choose to connect with a famous avant-garde artist responsible for the creation of about 2100 artworks and a man with a profound appreciation for striking colours. And out of these influential pieces, you have the privilege of focusing on just one, the dazzling Starry Night. Capture a dramatic sky and dark landscape at Neon Brush .

TYPE IN YOUR SEARCH AND PRESS ENTER

Get Your ALL ACCESS Shop Pass here →

Coffee Painting Starry Night Art Project

Did you know you can make homemade paint using instant coffee? Prep an exciting coffee painting inspired by Vincent van Gogh! This fun twist on traditional painting is a fantastic way to explore one of van Gogh’s most famous works, Starry Night while learning about color values.

Paint Starry Night with Coffee

Vincent van Gogh, a world-renowned Dutch artist, created Starry Night in 1889, a masterpiece that has fascinated generations. Though van Gogh’s paintings now sell for millions, he was not famous during his lifetime. Today, we’re celebrating his unique style through a hands-on art activity perfect for kids. And the best part? We’re using instant coffee!

This famous artist inspired project is not only a wonderful way to appreciate van Gogh’s artistry but also a great introduction to color theory by experimenting with different shades of brown.

• Starry Night template (printable; see below)
• Instant coffee
• Paintbrushes
• 4 small containers
• Paper towels (for clean-up!)

How to Make Coffee Paint

Print Your Template: Download and print the provided Starry Night template, or feel free to sketch your own starry sky!

Prepare Your Coffee Paint: In four containers, mix different coffee-to-water ratios to create varying shades of brown. Start by adding 1 teaspoon of instant coffee into each container. Adjust the water amounts (¼ teaspoon, ½ teaspoon, 1 full teaspoon, etc.) to achieve a range of light to dark values. The more water you add, the lighter the coffee color will be.

Start Painting: Use your coffee mixtures to paint Starry Night ! Experiment with the different values to show light and dark areas, just as van Gogh did in his original painting. Focus on the swirls, sky, and stars to create depth in your art using only shades of coffee.

7 Elements of Art – Value

Value is one of the 7 elements of art , describing the lightness or darkness of a color. In van Gogh’s Starry Night , the range of values creates depth and contrast. This coffee painting activity is a great way to explore the concept of value using monochrome shades. Even young artists will understand value as they see the difference between the lighter and darker coffee shades.

Extension Activities:

Related Art Activities

• Texture Art Project : This sensory-rich activity explores recycled and reusable materials to create art.
• Famous Artist Pack : Learn about 26 famous artists with our engaging artist pack. Discover how these artists contributed to the art world, and try your hand at creating art inspired by each one.
• Pop Art Portrait Activity : Create fun, vibrant Pop Art portraits inspired by the famous artist Andy Warhol! This back-to-school art project is perfect for both elementary classrooms and at-home creativity.

Printable Famous Artist Project Pack

Explore 25+ famous artists , past and present! Discover famous women in art, people of color, and Indienous artists along with the masters.

• Artist Project Sheets : Three hands-on activities for each artist.
• Printable Art Activities : Additional fun ideas to complement each artist’s style.
• Artist Biography Sheets : Simple, kid-friendly overviews of each artist.
• Animated Artist Videos : Watch and try art projects with easy step-by-step guides.
• My Favorite Artist Mini Pack : Dive deeper into an artist of your choice.
• Getty Art Challenge : Learn how to try this amazing challenge at home or in the classroom!
• Supply Lists & Helpful Tips : Stay organized and set your projects up for success!
• Plus Bonuses!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Subscribe to receive a free 5-Day STEM Challenge Guide

~ projects to try now ~.