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The Starry Night

The Starry Night
Vincent van Gogh, 1889
Oil on canvas
73 × 92 cm, 28¾ × 36¼ in
Museum of Modern Art, New York City
For other uses, see Starry Night (disambiguation).

The Starry Night (Dutch: De sterrennacht) is a painting by Dutch post-impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh. Since 1941 it has been in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Widely hailed as his magnum opus, the painting has been reproduced many times and is one of his most renowned paintings.

Contents

Genesis

In September 1888, while van Gogh was staying in Arles, he executed a painting commonly known as Starry Night Over the Rhone[1] and later he incorporated a pen drawing in a set of a dozen based on recent paintings.

In mid-September 1889, following a heavy crisis which lasted from mid-July to the last days of August, he thought to include this "Study of the Night"[2] in the next batch of works to be sent to his brother, Theo, in Paris. In order to reduce the shipping costs, he withheld three of the studies ("above-mentioned – Poppies – Night Effect – Moonrise"). These three went to Paris with the shipment to follow.[3] As Theo did not immediately report its arrival, Vincent inquired again,[4] and finally received Theo's commentary on his recent work.[5]

Subject matter

This is no photography of an actual site, but a free compilation of local topics to be seen in the neighborhood of the asylum in Saint-Rémy and compiled by an artist who had studied the various elements of his composition in detail. The center part shows the village of Saint-Rémy, in a view from the asylum towards north. The Alpilles far to the right fit to this view, but there is little rapport of the actual scene with the intermediary hills which seem to be derived from a different part of the surroundings, south of the asylum. The cypress tree to the left was added into the composition.[6] Of note, is the fact van Gogh had already, during his time in Arles, repositioned Ursa Major from the north to the south in his painting Starry Night Over the Rhone.

Recent commentaries

  • As pointed out by Simon Singh in his book Big Bang, The Starry Night has striking similarities to Whirlpool Galaxy, a sketch made 44 years before van Gogh's work.
  • The painting has been compared to an astronomical photograph of a star named V838 Monocerotis, taken by the Hubble in 2004. The clouds of gas surrounding the star resemble the swirling patterns van Gogh used in this painting. The image is rated number one on space.com's collection of astronomical images.[7]

Aims and ends

Van Gogh was perhaps not so happy with this painting. In a letter[2] to Theo from Saint-Rémy he wrote:

“ The first four canvases are studies without the effect of a whole that the others have . . . The olives with white clouds and background of mountains, also the moonrise and the night effect, these are exaggerations from the point of view of arrangement, their lines are warped as that of old wood. ”

Later in this letter, Vincent referred once more to the painting:

“ In all this batch I think nothing at all good save the field of wheat, the mountain, the orchard, the olives with the blue hills and the portrait and the entrance to the Quarry, and the rest says nothing to me, because it lacks individual intention and feeling in the lines. Where these lines are close and deliberate it begins to be a picture, even if it is exaggerated. That is a little what Bernard and Gauguin feel, they do not ask the correct shape of a tree at all, but they insist absolutely that one can say if the shape is round or square - and my word, they are right, exasperated as they are by certain people's photographic and empty perfection. Certainly they will not ask the correct tone of the mountains, but they will say: In the Name of God, the mountains were blue, were they? Then chuck on some blue and don't go telling me that it was a blue rather like this or that, it was blue, wasn't it? Good - make them blue and it's enough! Gauguin is sometimes like a genius when he explains this, but as for the genius Gauguin has, he is very timid about showing it, and it is touching the way he likes to say something really useful to the young. How strange he is all the same. ”

Legacy

The painting was the inspiration for French composer Henri Dutilleux's orchestral work Timbres, Espace, Mouvement, American poet Anne Sexton's poem "The Starry Night", Canadian composer Giancarlo Scalia's piano composition Starry Night and for Don McLean's song "Vincent", which is also known by its opening words, "Starry, Starry Night."

Resources

Notes

  1. ^ 595
  2. ^ a b Letter 607
  3. ^ Letter 608
  4. ^ Letter 609
  5. ^ Letter T19
  6. ^ [1] The Museum of Modern Art maintains the traditional identification of a cypress tree.
  7. ^ V838 Monocerotis Space.com's Most Amazing Galactic Images Ever

References

Boime, Albert: Vincent van Gogh: Starry Night. A history of matter, a matter of history (also available on CD-ROM: ISBN 3-634-23015-0 (German version))

External links

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