Van Gogh Starry Night Drawing
Painting: Starry Night
Artist: Vincent van Gogh
Medium: Pen
Size: 47 x 62.5 cm
Original Location: Saint-Remy
Year: June 1889
Meseum: Lost (formerly in the Kunsthalle Bremen)
March 29, 2009
March 17, 2009
Van Gogh “The Starry Night”
Van Gogh Starry Night
Painting: Starry Night
Artist: Vincent van Gogh
Original Location: Saint-Remy
Year: June 1889
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 73.7 x 92.1 cm
Museum: New York, The Museum of Modern Art
‘The Starry Night‘ was not Van Gogh’s first depiction of a night sky. In Arles, he had been proud of his painting of the stars and the reflection of the lights of the town in the River Rhône, one of the first results of a plan intimated to Emile Bernard in April 1888. He wanted to paint a starry night as an example of working from the imagination, which could add to the value of a painting: ‘we may succeed in creating a more exciting and comforting nature than we can discern with a single glimpse of reality’, he wrote. In a letter to Theo of the same date, Vincent was more explicit about the motif: ‘a starry night with cypresses or possibly above a field of ripe wheat’. With his ‘Starry Night’, painted in Saint-Rémy, he fulfilled that promise and did so at a time when he was more determined than ever to prove himself the equal of his fellow artists.