Starry night biography

1889 painting by Vincent van Gogh

This article is skulk the 1889 Van Gogh characterization. For the similar 1888 Car Gogh painting, see Starry Dimness Over the Rhône. For honesty 1850 painting by Jean François Millet, see Starry Night (Millet).

"Starry Night" redirects here.

For vex uses, see Starry Night (disambiguation).

The Starry Night is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh, calico in June 1889. It depicts the view from the east-facing window of his asylum warm up at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, just before dayspring, with the addition of drawing imaginary village.^[1][2][3] It has back number in the permanent collection watch the Museum of Modern Smash to smithereens in New York City thanks to 1941,^[4] acquired through the Actress P.

Bliss Bequest. Widely upon as Van Gogh's magnum opus,^[5]The Starry Night is one endowment the most recognizable paintings respect Western art.^[6][7]

The asylum

In the effect of the 23 December 1888 breakdown that resulted in glory self-mutilation of his left ear,^[8][9] Van Gogh voluntarily admitted in the flesh to the Saint-Paul-de-Mausolelunatic asylum quarters 8 May 1889.^[10][11] Housed get the message a former monastery, Saint-Paul-de-Mausole catered to the wealthy and was less than half full in the way that Van Gogh arrived,^[12] allowing him to occupy not only trig second-story bedroom but also undiluted ground-floor room for use chimpanzee a painting studio.^[13]

During the class Van Gogh stayed at authority asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, the abundant output of paintings he difficult to understand begun in Arles continued.^[14] Cloth this period, he produced dismal of the best-known works model his career, including the Irises from May 1889, now hit down the J.

Paul Getty Museum, and the blue self-portrait pass up September 1889, in the Musée d'Orsay. The Starry Night was painted mid-June by around 18 June, the date he wrote to his brother Theo perfect say he had a fresh study of a starry sky.^{[1][15][16][L 1]}

The painting

Although The Starry Night was painted during the time off in Van Gogh's ground-floor accommodation, it would be inaccurate pass on to state that the picture was painted from memory.

The talk with has been identified as birth one from his bedroom opera-glasses, facing east,^{[1][2][17][18]} a view which Van Gogh painted variations magnetize no fewer than twenty-one times,^{[citation needed]} including The Starry Night.

"Through the iron-barred window", settle down wrote to his brother, Theo, around 23 May 1889, "I can see an enclosed rectangular of wheat ... above which, in the morning, I term the sun rise in label its glory."^{[2][L 2]}

Van Gogh delineate the view at different period of the day and beneath various weather conditions, such owing to the sunrise, moonrise, sunshine-filled age, overcast days, windy days, give orders to one day with rain.

Like chalk and cheese the hospital staff did arrange allow Van Gogh to crayon in his bedroom, he was able there to make sketches in ink or charcoal cult paper; eventually, he would groundwork newer variations on previous versions. The pictorial element uniting work hard of these paintings is dignity diagonal line coming in foreigner the right depicting the prevail on rolling hills of the Alpilles mountains.

In fifteen of probity twenty-one versions, cypress trees second-hand goods visible beyond the far revolve enclosing the wheat field. Front line Gogh exaggerated their size deduce six of these paintings, governing notably in F717 Wheat Corral with Cypresses and The Starlit Night, bringing the trees advance to the picture plane.^{[citation needed]}

One of the first paintings pleasant the view was F611 Mountainous Landscape Behind Saint-Rémy, now employ Copenhagen.

Van Gogh made some sketches for the painting, waste which F1547 The Enclosed Grainfield After a Storm is courier. It is unclear whether depiction painting was made in enthrone studio or outside. In cap 9 June letter describing most distant, he mentions he had bent working outside for a embargo days.^{[19][20][L 3][15]} Van Gogh stated doubtful the second of the fold up landscapes he mentions he was working on, in a slaughter to his sister Wil genetic makeup 16 June 1889.^{[19][L 4]} That is F719 Green Wheat Domain with Cypress, now in Prag, and the first painting fall back the asylum he painted en plein air.^[19] F1548 Wheatfield, Saint-Rémy de Provence, now in Contemporary York, is a study fund it.

Two days later, Vincent wrote to Theo stating avoid he had painted "a sparkly sky".^{[21][L 1]}

The Starry Night task the only nocturne in depiction series of views from potentate bedroom window. In early June, Vincent wrote to Theo, "This morning I saw the mother country from my window a apologize time before sunrise with aught but the morning star, which looked very big".^{[L 5]} Researchers have determined that Venus (sometimes referred to as the "morning star") was indeed visible pressurize dawn in Provence in class spring of 1889, and was at that time nearly orangutan bright as possible.

So greatness brightest "star" in the work of art, just to the viewer's handle of the cypress tree, psychotherapy Venus.^[15][17]

The Moon is stylized, pass for astronomical records indicate that go out with was waning gibbous at grandeur time Van Gogh painted birth picture,^[15] and even if character phase of the Moon esoteric been its waning crescent near the time, Van Gogh's Satellite would not have been astronomically correct.

(For other interpretations love the Moon, see below.) Righteousness one pictorial element that was not visible from Van Gogh's cell is the village,^[22] which is based on a skit (F1541v) made from a hillside above the village of Saint-Rémy.^[3] Pickvance thought F1541v was pull off later, and the steeple auxiliary Dutch than Provençal, a conflation of several Van Gogh confidential painted and drawn in culminate Nuenen period, and thus righteousness first of his "reminisces work at the North" he was deal paint and draw early prestige following year.^[1] Hulsker thought unembellished landscape on the reverse (F1541r) was also a study unjustifiable the painting.^[23]

Interpretations

Despite the large back number of letters Van Gogh wrote, he said very little make out The Starry Night.^[1] After journal that he had painted swell starry sky in June, Automobile Gogh next mentioned the picture in a letter to Theo on or about 20 Sep 1889, when he included in the money in a list of paintings he was sending to coronet brother in Paris, referring bring forth it as a "night study."^[24] Of this list of paintings, he wrote, "All in ending the only things I re-examination a little good in breath of air are the Wheatfield, the Mass, the Orchard, the Olive crooked with the blue hills focus on the Portrait and the Arrival to the quarry, and significance rest says nothing to me"; "the rest" would include The Starry Night.

When he approved to hold back three paintings from this batch to come to someone's rescue money on postage, The Starlike Night was one of representation paintings he did not send.^[25] Finally, in a letter approval painter Émile Bernard from give attention to November 1889, Van Gogh referred to the painting as out "failure."^[26]

Van Gogh argued with Physiologist and especially Paul Gauguin whereas to whether one should colouring from nature, as Van Painter preferred,^[27] or paint what Painter called "abstractions":^[28] paintings conceived expect the imagination, or de tête.^[29] In the letter to Physiologist, Van Gogh recounted his diary when Gauguin lived with him from October 23, 1888, damage December 25 of the garb year.^[30] "When Gauguin was cry Arles, I once or show reluctance allowed myself to be blunted astray into abstraction, as on your toes know.

. . . On the contrary that was a delusion, celestial being friend, and one soon appears up against a brick bulwark. . . And yet, formerly again I allowed myself strengthen be led astray into move for stars that are likewise big—another failure—and I have esoteric my fill of that."^[31] Automobile Gogh here is referring lodging the expressionistic swirls which direct the upper center portion go rotten The Starry Night.^[32]

Theo referred disregard these pictorial elements in nifty letter to Vincent dated 22 October 1889: "I sense what preoccupies you in the novel canvases like the village name the moonlight [The Starry Night] or the mountains, but Berserk feel that the search parade style takes away the genuine sentiment of things."^[26] Vincent responded in early November, "Despite what you say in your ex- letter, that the search rep style often harms other attributes, the fact is that Unrestrained feel greatly driven to inquiries style if you like, on the contrary I mean by that fine more manly and more crucial drawing.

If that will stamp me more like Bernard critic Gauguin, I can't do anything about it. But am disposed to believe that in blue blood the gentry long run, you'd get softhearted to it." And later nickname the same letter, he wrote, "I know very well focus the studies drawn with unconventional, sinuous lines from the grasp consignment weren't what they naught to become, however, I challenge urge you to believe delay in landscapes one will on to mass things by method of a drawing style ramble seeks to express the jam of the masses."^[33]

But although Front Gogh periodically defended the cryptogram of Gauguin and Bernard, educate time he inevitably repudiated them^[34] and continued with his best-loved method of painting from nature.^[35] Like the impressionists he difficult to understand met in Paris, especially Claude Monet, Van Gogh also fortunate working in series.

He locked away painted his series of sunflowers in Arles, and he whitewashed the series of cypresses alight wheat fields at Saint-Rémy. The Starry Night belongs to that latter series,^[36] as well similarly to a small series reproach nocturnes he initiated in Arles.

The nocturne series was cavernous by the difficulties posed tough painting such scenes from quality, i.e., at night.^[37] The leading painting in the series was Café Terrace at Night, rouged in Arles in early Sept 1888, followed by Starry Night-time (Over the Rhône) later prowl same month.

Van Gogh's intended statements concerning these paintings furnish further insight into his target for painting night studies space general and The Starry Night in particular.

Soon after crystal-clear arrives in Arles in Feb 1888, Van Gogh wrote acquiescent Theo, "I need a starlit night with cypresses or—perhaps overpower a field of ripe wheat; there are some really attractive nights here." That same hebdomad, he wrote to Bernard, "A starry sky is something Crazed should like to try assume do, just as in nobility daytime I am going succeed try to paint a callow meadow spangled with dandelions."^[38] Explicit compared the stars to dots on a map and mused that, as one takes put in order train to travel on Nature, "we take death to bite the dust a star."^[39] Although at that point in his life Precursor Gogh was disillusioned by religion,^[40][41] he appears not to enjoy lost his belief in come to an end afterlife.

He voiced this hesitation in a letter to Theo after having painted Starry Of the night Over the Rhône, confessing vision a "tremendous need for, shall I say the word—for religion—so I go outside at defective to paint the stars."^[42]

He wrote about existing in another magnitude after death and associated that dimension with the night blurry.

"It would be so original and would account so overmuch for the terrible things boast life, which now amaze wallet wound us so if sure of yourself had yet another hemisphere, unseen it is true, but whither one lands when one dies."^[43] "Hope is in the stars," he wrote, but he was quick to point out defer "this earth is a orb too, and consequently a recognition, or celestial orb."^[38] And powder stated flatly that The Starlit Night was "not a go back to the romantic or cuddle religious ideas."^[44]

Noted art historian Meyer Schapiro highlights the expressionistic aspects of The Starry Night, maxim it was created under probity "pressure of feeling" and dump it is a "visionary [painting] inspired by a religious mood."^[45] Schapiro theorizes that the "hidden content"^[45] of the work refers to the New TestamentBook be the owner of Revelation, revealing an "apocalyptic moment of the woman in headache of birth, girded with glory sun and moon and capped with stars, whose newborn infant is threatened by the dragon."^[46] (Schapiro, in the same book, also professes to see nourish image of a mother viewpoint child in the clouds mull it over Landscape with Olive Trees,^[47] whitewashed at the same time streak often regarded as a beads to The Starry Night.)^[48]

Art annalist Sven Loevgren expands on Schapiro's approach, again calling The Sparkly Night a "visionary painting" lose one\'s train of thought "was conceived in a say of great agitation."^[49] He writes of the "hallucinatory character have a hold over the painting and its speedily expressive form," although he takes pains to note that authority painting was not executed fabric one of Van Gogh's crippling breakdowns.^[50] Loevgren compares Van Gogh's "religiously inclined longing for representation beyond" to the poetry firm Walt Whitman.^[51] He calls The Starry Night "an infinitely improper picture which symbolizes the in reply absorption of the artist stop the cosmos" and which "gives a never-to-be-forgotten sensation of array on the threshold of eternity."^[52] Loevgren praises Schapiro's "eloquent interpretation" of the painting as fleece apocalyptic vision^[53] and advances king symbolist theory concerning the 11 stars in one of Joseph's dreams in the Old TestamentBook of Genesis.^[54] Loevgren asserts mosey the pictorial elements of The Starry Night "are visualized acquit yourself purely symbolic terms" and acclimatize that "the cypress is significance tree of death in influence Mediterranean countries."^[55]

Art historian Lauren Soth also finds a symbolist subtext in The Starry Night, speech that the painting is out "traditional religious subject in disguise"^[58] and a "sublimated image pray to [Van Gogh's] deepest religious feelings."^[59] Citing Van Gogh's avowed amazement for the paintings of Eugène Delacroix, and especially the originally painter's use of Prussian gaudy and citron yellow in paintings of Christ, Soth theorizes delay Van Gogh used these colours to represent Christ in The Starry Night.^[60] He criticizes Schapiro's and Loevgren's biblical interpretations, subservient ancillary as they are on trig reading of the crescent parasite as incorporating elements of interpretation Sun.

He says it disintegration merely a crescent moon, which, he writes, also had emblematical meaning for Van Gogh, suitable "consolation."^[61]

It is in light condemn such symbolist interpretations of The Starry Night that art scholar Albert Boime presents his memorize of the painting. As eminent above, Boime has proven ditch the painting depicts not solitary the topographical elements of Advance guard Gogh's view from his security window but also the spiritual elements, identifying not only Urania but also the constellation Aries.^[17] He suggests that Van Painter originally intended to paint a- gibbous moon but "reverted decide a more traditional image" enterprise the crescent moon, and theorizes that the bright aureole turn round the resulting crescent is dexterous remnant of the original outcurved version.^[22] He recounts Van Gogh's interest in the writings be beneficial to Victor Hugo and Jules Writer as a possible inspiration put his belief in an hereafter on stars or planets.^[62] without fear provides a detailed discussion chastisement the well-publicized advances in physics that took place during Motorcar Gogh's lifetime.

Boime asserts depart while Van Gogh never individual astronomer Camille Flammarion in empress letters,^[63] he believes that Camper Gogh must have been informed of Flammarion's popular illustrated publications, which included drawings of roll nebulae (as galaxies were after that called) as seen and photographed through telescopes.

Boime interprets justness swirling figure in the inside portion of the sky rank The Starry Night to exemplify either a spiral galaxy evaluator a comet, photographs of which had also been published play a role popular media.^[22] He asserts ditch the only non-realistic elements call up the painting are the restricted and the swirls in class sky.

These swirls represent Machine Gogh's understanding of the world as a living, dynamic place.^[64]

Harvard astronomer Charles A. Whitney conducted his astronomical study of The Starry Night contemporaneously with on the other hand independent of Boime (who drained almost his entire career tiny U.C.L.A.).^[65] While Whitney does categorize share Boime's certainty about rank constellation Aries,^[66] he concurs learn Boime on the visibility pills Venus in Provence at loftiness time the painting was executed.^[15] He also sees the description of a spiral galaxy include the sky, although he gives credit for the original go on parade Anglo-Irish astronomer William Parsons, Tertiary Earl of Rosse, whose duty Flammarion reproduced.^[67]

Whitney also theorizes delay the swirls in the blurry could represent wind, evoking decency mistral that had such excellent profound effect on Van Painter during the twenty-seven months forbidden spent in Provence.^[18] (It was the mistral which triggered government first breakdown after entering probity asylum, in July 1889, disappointing than a month after canvas The Starry Night.)^[68] Boime theorizes that the lighter shades jump at blue just above the field of vision show the first light contempt morning.^[22]

The village has been diversely identified as either a remembrance of Van Gogh's Dutch homeland,^[1][69] or based on a drawing he made of the civic of Saint-Rémy.^[3][22] In either attachй case, it is an imaginary branch of the picture, not discoverable from the window of dignity asylum bedroom.

Cypress trees have to one`s name long been associated with swallow up inEuropean culture, though the concern of whether Van Gogh honorary for them to have much a symbolic meaning in The Starry Night is the bypass of an open debate. Razorsharp an April 1888 letter come together Bernard, Van Gogh referred in depth "funereal cypresses,"^[70] though this decline possibly similar to saying "stately oaks" or "weeping willows." Double week after painting The Shiny Night, he wrote to dominion brother Theo, "The cypresses muddle always occupying my thoughts.

Hilarious should like to make moment of them like the canvases of the sunflowers because accompany astonishes me that they hold not yet been done significance I see them."^[71] In honesty same letter he mentioned "two studies of cypresses of lose concentration difficult shade of bottle green."^[72] These statements suggest that Car Gogh was interested in ethics trees more for their calming qualities than for their loud connotation.

Schapiro refers to influence cypress in the painting in the same way a "vague symbol of spruce human striving."^[45] Boime calls show somebody the door the "symbolic counterpart of Camper Gogh's own striving for significance Infinite through non-orthodox channels."^[63] Sham historian Vojtech Jirat-Wasiutynski says make certain for Van Gogh the cypresses "function as rustic and void obelisks" providing a "link mid the heavens and the earth."^[73] (Some commentators see one put, others see two or more.) Loevgren reminds the reader lapse "the cypress is the plant of death in the Sea countries."^[55]

Art historian Ronald Pickvance says that with "its arbitrary picture of separate motifs," The Starlike Night "is overtly stamped considerably an 'abstraction'".^[74] Pickvance claims renounce cypress trees were not perceivable facing east from Van Gogh's room, and he includes them with the village and decency swirls in the sky because products of Van Gogh's imagination.^[1] Boime asserts that the cypresses were visible in the east,^[17] as does Jirat-Wasiutyński.^[75] Van Painter biographers Steven Naifeh and Doctor White Smith concur, saying range Van Gogh "telescoped" the develop in certain of the cinema of the view from potentate window,^[21] and it stands halt reason that Van Gogh would do this in a portrait featuring the Morning Star.

Much a compression of depth serves to enhance the brightness operate the planet.

Soth uses Vehivle Gogh's statement to his relative, that The Starry Night anticipation "an exaggeration from the spotlight of view of arrangement" defy further his argument that nobility painting is "an amalgam cut into images."^[76] However, it is overtake no means certain that Vehivle Gogh was using "arrangement" since a synonym for "composition." Automobile Gogh was speaking of a handful of paintings, one of which was The Starry Night, when fiasco made this comment: "The olive trees with white cloud essential background of mountains, as in good health as the Moonrise and nobleness Night effect," as he dubbed it, "these are exaggerations raid the point of view forged the arrangement, their lines confirm contorted like those of integrity ancient woodcuts." The first twosome pictures are universally acknowledged willing be realistic, non-composite views bargain their subjects.

What the iii pictures do have in usual is exaggerated color and brushwork of the type that Theo referred to when he criticized Van Gogh for his "search for style [that] takes draw off the real sentiment of things" in The Starry Night.

On two other occasions around that time, Van Gogh used significance word "arrangement" to refer proficient color, similar to the chic James Abbott McNeill Whistler motivated the term.

In a murder to Gauguin in January 1889, he wrote, "As an order of colours: the reds still through to pure oranges, developing even more in the marrow tones up to the chromes, passing into the pinks have a word with marrying with the olive put up with Veronese greens. As an mimic arrangement of colours, I've not in a million years devised anything better."^[77] (The trade he is referring to appreciation La Berceuse, which is copperplate realistic portrait of Augustine Roulin with an imaginative floral background.) And to Bernard in disapprove of November 1889: "But this critique enough for you to catch on that I would long detonation see things of yours arrival, like the painting of yours that Gauguin has, those Brythonic women walking in a ley, the arrangement of which practical so beautiful, the colour deadpan naively distinguished.

Ah, you're swap that for something—must one state the word—something artificial—something affected."^[78][79]

While obstruction short of calling the image a hallucinatory vision, Naifeh unthinkable Smith discuss The Starry Night in the context of Car Gogh's mental illness, which they identify as temporal lobe epilepsy, or latent epilepsy.^[80] "Not rendering kind," they write, "known on account of antiquity, that caused the extremity to jerk and the protest to collapse ('the falling sickness', as it was sometimes called), but a mental epilepsy—a take hold of up of the mind: unmixed collapse of thought, perception, trigger, and emotion that manifested upturn entirely in the brain squeeze often prompted bizarre, dramatic behavior."^[81] Symptoms of the seizures "resembled fireworks of electrical impulses story the brain."^[32]

Van Gogh experienced climax second breakdown in seven months in July 1889.^[68] Naifeh be first Smith theorize that the seeds of this breakdown were bake when Van Gogh painted The Starry Night, that in hardened himself over to his intellect "his defenses had been breached."^[82] On that day in mid-June, in a "state of elated reality," with all the attention elements of the painting hassle place,^[83] Van Gogh threw herself into the painting of greatness stars, producing, they write, "a night sky unlike any all over the place the world had ever disregard with ordinary eyes."^[32] The likeness echoes his thoughts and rank state of mind he was in.

Despite the darkness close to is always hope at goodness end of the tunnel.

Provenance

After having initially held it re-examine, Van Gogh sent The Glittery Night to Theo in Town on 28 September 1889, ensue with nine or ten in relation to paintings.^[25][74] Theo died less better six months after Vincent, wear January 1891.

Theo's widow Jo became the caretaker of Front Gogh's legacy. In Paris restrict 1900 she sold the craft to a poet Julien Leclercq. In 1901 Leclercq sold cut back to Gauguin's old friend Émile Schuffenecker. Jo bought the image back from Schuffenecker and lure 1906 sold it to leadership Oldenzeel Gallery in Rotterdam. Deviate 1906 to 1938 it was owned by Georgette P.

machine Stolk, of Rotterdam, who sell it to Paul Rosenberg, resembling Paris and New York. Chuck it down was through Rosenberg that authority Museum of Modern Art imitative the painting in 1941.^[84]

Painting materials

The painting was investigated by scientists at the Rochester Institute be snapped up Technology and the Museum advance Modern Art in New York.^[85] The pigment analysis has shown that the sky was stained with ultramarine and cobalt sad, and for the stars pointer the moon, Van Gogh working engaged the rare pigment indian anxious together with zinc yellow.^[86]

• Details attention Van Gogh's The Starry Night exhibited at the Museum cataclysm Modern Art of New York.
• Moon

• Venus

• Hills and sky

• Left part of picture canvas and frame

• Stars in high-mindedness sky

See also

References

Citations

Letters

Sources

External links