The Starry Night
The Starry Night is one of the most well-known paintings that the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh ever created. It is a landscape painting that depicts an evocative night sky over a little hillside village and was completed in 1889.
The night sky in the oil-on-canvas painting depicts as churning with chromatic blue swirls. A blazing yellow crescent moon, and stars renders as radiating spheres. These elements dominate the composition. To the left of the scene, one or two cypress trees, which are frequently compares to flames, tower over the foreground. The black branches of these trees curve and sway in response to the movement of the sky, which they partially hide. A well-built community can be seen off in the distance on the lower right side of the painting, despite all of this active motion. The modest houses and the thin steeple of a church, which rises as a beacon against the undulating blue hills, both have straight regulated lines for their construction. In the midst of the chaos depicts in the painting, a pocket of serenity creates by the luminous yellow squares of the dwellings, which allude to the warm lights of welcoming homes.
Background
A number of months after experiencing a breakdown in which he sliced a part of his own ear with a razor, Van Gogh painted “The Starry Night” while he was a patient at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole institution near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France. This occurred during his 12-month stay at the asylum. While he was confine to the institution, he experiences periods of intense creativity intersperse with bouts of despondency. Because van Gogh is an artist who prefers to work from observation, he restricts to painting only the subjects that were immediately available to him. This includes his own likeness, the views that could be seen from his studio window, and the surrounding countryside that he could only visit with a companion.
Vincent Van Gogh
The painting “The Starry Night,” which Vincent van Gogh finished in 1889, is not only consider to be one of the artist’s most famous works, but it is also consider to be one of the most famous paintings in the world. Today, Vincent van Gogh considers to be one of the most celebrated artists of the nineteenth century. But Vincent van Gogh and his most cherished artwork did not always enjoy the kind of fame that they do now. Even in this day and age, there are not many people who have a deep understanding of his creative process. The majority of people are content with only knowing his name and a few general “facts” regarding his mental health.
Van Gogh spent the majority of his life in obscurity, despite the fact that in the two years prior to his death he received a modest amount of recognition for his work. Van Gogh was born in the Netherlands in 1853. He developed an early interest in painting and worked for a period of time as an art dealer during his early twenties. However, he did not start his career as an artist until 1880, when he enrolled in lessons at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. Prior to that, he spent the majority of his adult life working in a variety of vocations.
In spite of the fact that van Gogh’s career as an artist lasted for only ten years, he managed to produce more than 850 paintings in addition to close to 1,300 drawings, sketches, and other works on paper. However, in spite of the huge quantity of work he had produced, he only managed to sell a few of his paintings before taking his own life in 1890, when he was thirty-seven years old.
Facts about The Starry Night
- Van Gogh considered Starry Night a failure
It’s hard to imagine that a classic painting by a revered artist might fail. So Van Gogh said. He felt his abstract artwork failed. Van Gogh believed his composition was too remote from natural rhythms. Too vague!
Van Gogh’s Starry Night is set on a night sky with blue swirls and a luminous crescent. Stars resemble glowing orbs. The foreground has cypress trees while the background has a village. See cottages and a church. Starry Night was well-planned and coherent.
Van Gogh adored painting the night sky because it was more colorful and vibrant than the day. His Starry Night shows his love of the night. He died young and didn’t get to paint additional “Starry Nights.” However, he’s a renowned artist.
- Starry Night flickers
Starry Night illuminates the scientific wonder of motion and light. The human brain makes its lights flicker. Due to light and motion perceptions, most Impressionist works are like this.
The canvas’s colors’ light intensity generates luminosity. Part of the eye senses light contrast and motion but not color, blending two different colors as though they have the same brightness. The brain sees the clashing hues without merging, causing flickering.
Van Gogh’s Starry night has been studied extensively. Natalya St. Clair found that the Starry Night depicts turbulence accurately.
More Facts
- Venus is Van Gogh’s Starry Night
Albert Boime of UC Berkeley says Van Gogh painted Venus in Starry Night. Boime compared the artwork to a planetarium simulation of June 1, 1889 sky. The picture and reproduction have striking resemblance. Thus, Van Gogh unknowingly painted Venus.
- There are two Starry Nights
The Starry Night was painted in 1888. In 1888, he adored photographing France’s nighttime lights. He painted the Rhone River in The Starry Night sketch. Starry Night Over The Rhone is another name for this picture.
1889’s Starry Night was more popular than 1888’s.
- The Starry Night depicts death
Van Gogh discuss about his own painting, The Starry Night. He is quoted as saying “Looking at the stars always makes me dream. Why I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star.”
The Starry Night’s foreground features cypress trees, which are in connection with death and graves. This, together with his asylum situation and quote, gives a unique perspective on his painting. Mortality.