The Starry Night is an oil painting by the Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh. It was painted in June of 1889, it illustrates the view he saw from the window of his asylum room, right before sunrise. He paints the night sky with a village under the glow of the moon. The piece is 73.7 by 92 cm and is located within the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The town shown in the painting was done at least 21 other times but with different times of day and weather conditions (“Starry Night” Vincent Van Gogh). The Starry Night is seen as one of Van Gogh’s best works.
The first thing most notice when looking at this piece is the sky. The starry sky takes up more than half of the painting. In the sky, there is an orange and yellow moon along with eleven bright yellow stars. All of the stars are surrounded by rings of white light. Left of the center, it looks like a dark towering figure over the village. The large figure, which is a cypress tree, looks like black flames beginning or trying to engulf most of the painting, especially the sky (“Starry Night” Van Gogh Gallery). It stands alone on the top of a hill looking at the sky and the village.
The tree, covering part of the mountains, is untouched by the wind or the light reflected by the bright sky. It remains alone, as it could relate to how Van Gogh may have seen something blocking part of the sky, and it may have really been a tree like this. There were originally bars on his window but instead of blocking with the bars, he used the tree (“Starry Night” Artble). On the right of the painting, there is a small town with houses, a church, and some large blue hills. The church sits in the middle, as the focal point of the painting. Even though it is night, there are no lights shining down on the city (“Starry Night” MoMA). Due to the absence of light within the city, any bit of light would have been pulled from the stars and moon.
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The Starry Night was the start of a major mood shift for Van Gogh’s work. Van Gogh began to illustrate that even with a dark night like this it is still possible to have light in the city (“Starry Night” Vincent Van Gogh). This piece demonstrates that with shining stars filling the sky, there is always light to guide you, this happens because this was painted when he was finally being cured of his illness and had found to get rid of the depression. Before painting this Van Gogh was put into an asylum, he was treated well in the hospital; he was allowed more freedoms than any of the other patients. If he was accompanied, he could leave the hospital grounds; he was allowed to paint, read, and go alone into his own room (“Van Gogh” Khan Academy). He was even given his own studio to work in.
While he suffered from the occasional fall into paranoia and fits, he was officially diagnosed with “epileptic fits”, and at one point his mental health was recovering. This was then when he painted Starry Night. Unfortunately, he relapsed, He began to suffer hallucination and have thoughts of suicide as he soon fell into depression (“Starry Night-Van Gogh” Van Gogh Gallery). From here on out, there was a tonal shift in his work. There were many troubles and issues Van Gogh faced around the time of this piece, and this is another reason this later went on to become one of his best known works.
When the Museum of Modern Art in New York City bought The Starry Night from a private collector in 1941, it was not well known by anyone, but it has become one of van Gogh’s most famous, if not one of the most recognized, works in the art history (“Starry Night” Britannica). This then also became one of its most frequently interpreted from its meaning to its importance. This is personally my favorite piece of art that I have seen or learned about. When I was younger I had this up in my room on a much larger scale. I found myself randomly losing focus on anything I had been doing, because I would stare at the piece for a long time, ten minutes at a time. I enjoyed the swirls of the night sky, hills, and cypress tree; it made the piece more whimsical and mysterious. At one point I had looked at one of the other Starry Night pieces, but none of them caught my eye as much as this one had. To this day, I still have my Starry Night. The Starry Night is seen as my favorite art pieces and one of Van Gogh’s best works.
