The Starry Night

The Starry Night, often called simply Starry Night, is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh. Painted in June 1889, it depicts the view from the east-facing window of his asylum room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, just before sunrise, with the addition of an imaginary village. It has been in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City since 1941, acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest. Described as a "touchstone of modern art", The Starry Night has been regarded as one of the most recognizable paintings in the Western canon.

The painting was created in mid-June 1889, inspired by the view from Van Gogh’s bedroom window at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum. The former monastery functioned as a mental asylum, where Van Gogh voluntarily admitted himself on May 8, 1889, following a mental breakdown and his infamous act of self-mutilation that occurred in late December 1888. Catering to wealthy patients, the facility was less than half full at the time of Van Gogh's admission, allowing the artist access to both a second-story bedroom and a ground-floor studio. During his year-long stay, he remained highly productive, creating Irises, a self-portrait, and The Starry Night.

The painting's celestial elements include Venus, which was visible in the sky at the time, though the moon’s depiction is not astronomically accurate. The cypress trees in the foreground were exaggerated in scale compared to other works. Van Gogh's letters suggest he viewed them primarily in aesthetic rather than symbolic terms. The village in the painting is an imaginary addition, based on sketches rather than the actual landscape seen from the asylum.

The Starry Night has been subject to various interpretations, ranging from religious symbolism to representations of Van Gogh’s emotional turmoil. Some art historians link the swirling sky to contemporary astronomical discoveries, while others see it as an expression of Van Gogh’s personal struggles. Van Gogh himself was critical of the painting, referring to it as a "failure" in letters to his brother, Theo. The artwork was inherited by Theo upon Vincent's death. Following Theo's death six months after Vincent's, the work was owned by Theo's widow, Jo, who sold it to Émile Schuffenecker in 1901, who sold it back to Jo in 1905. From 1906 to 1938 it was owned by one Georgette P. van Stolk, of Rotterdam. Paul Rosenberg bought it from van Stolk in 1938 and sold it (by exchange) to the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1941, which rarely loans it out. Scientific analysis of the painting has confirmed Van Gogh’s use of ultramarine and cobalt blue for the sky, with Indian yellow and zinc yellow for the stars and moon.