Description
Starry night
| Year created: | 1889 |
| Original size: | 73 x 92 cm |
| Painting style: | Post-Impressionism |
| Original technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Located: | The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York |
Canvas painting Starry Night by Van Gogh painted in 1889 during treatment at the clinic in Saint Remy. Many experts rank it among his most important artistic creations.
The original has been part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York since 1941.
Van Gogh depicted real motifs in his paintings. Nevertheless, art historians and astronomers are unable to determine which stars and planets are depicted in this art painting Starry Night. It is known that the window of his room in the clinic, where the painting was created, faced east, and the artistic painting was created during the day. The picture is a collage of the day and weather phenomena. It shows sunrise, moonrise, cloudy sunny and windy day. The village in the painting is fictional. The Alps are in the background. Cypress trees in the foreground as a common detail in many of his paintings. In the painting Starry Night, he unusually highlighted them in the painting plane. Van Gogh mentioned a study of this painting in a letter to his brother Theo dated June 18, so it is estimated that it was painted in the middle of that month in 1889.
The Starry Night style is Post-Impressionism which was a popular painting style of the late nineteenth century and one of his rare nocturnal creations.
Van Gogh was not impressed with the painting and in one of his letters to the painter Emil Bernard, he described it as “a failure he had had enough of”. The painting Starry Night was described by Theou as a sincere attempt to find a different style, with which he wanted to distance himself as much as possible from his contemporaries Gauguin and Barnard.
More modern interpretations of the painting Starry Night are different. Art historian Lovgren describes it as visionary, conceived in a state of great excitement and attributes to it a religious longing for death. Lauren Soth attributes to it a symbolic subtext of religious feelings.
After initially wanting to keep the painting, van Gogh sent it to Theu Gallery in Paris on September 28, 1889, along with nine or ten other paintings. After Theo’s death, the painting passed to Theo Van Gogh’s widow Joanna Gezino van Gogh, a translator of van Gogh’s letters, as part of the trusteeship of the estate . In 1900 she sold the painting to the poet Leclercq, who in 1901 sold it to Schuffenecker, a friend of Gaugin. Joanna bought the painting back and sold it to the Oldenzeel Gallery in 1906. Until 1938 it was owned by Georgette P. van Stolk of Rotterdam, who sold it to Paul Rosenberg through whom in 1941 the painting was received by the Museum of Modern Art in New York – MoMA.
