The Starry Night is the artwork created by Vincent Willem Van Gogh, which has earned the title of the most famous painting in the history of art.
The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh
It is important to know in detail who this magnificent artist was.
About the artist
This famous painter was born on March 30, 1853 in a small town of Groot-Zunder, Holland. He was one of the leading post-impressionist artists at the end of the XNUMXth century.
His parents were Theodorus Van Gogh and Anna Cornelia Carbentus. His father was a humble Protestant minister. On May 1, his brother Theo was born, with whom he always had a special connection. And then they had 4 more siblings named Cornelius Vincent, Elisabetha Huberta, Anna Cornelia and Wilhelmina Jacoba.
In childhood he had a regular education, as his parents sent him to various boarding schools. In the first he studied French and German. Two years later he enrolled at HBS Koning Willem II High School, living with a local family. He stayed in that house until he left school permanently at the age of 15. And that's when he takes a liking to painting.
From a young age he had a strong and temperamental personality. After a year of having dropped out of school, he began to work in 1869 at the age of 16 as an apprentice for an international art trading company.
Paint Data
- The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh, has a size of 73.7 cm x 92.1 cm.
- In this painting the technique of aging was applied.
- Using fine brushes.
- This painting is currently in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
- But his first public exhibition was at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.
Following Vincent van Gogh's death, his sister-in-law Johanna Gezina van Gogh-Bonger owned The Starry Night on two separate occasions, inheriting it along with the rest of the artist's works in 1891, after the deaths of him and her husband Theo. She was instrumental in promoting the paintings and Vincent van Gogh's art, ultimately making him famous.
The first sale of The Starry Night took place in 1900, when it was purchased by the French poet Julien Leclerq, who also sold it to the Post-Impressionist artist Emile Schuffenecker. Six years later, his sister-in-law was able to recover the painting and give it to the Oldenzeel Gallery in Rotterdam.
Composition:
This artwork, called The Starry Night , is composed of two horizontal bands, which are the celestial vault and the landscape.
Characteristics of the Celestial Vault:
In the celestial vault we see that eleven stars with their own light are observed in the sky. With two nebulous spirals that seem to meet and give the impression that they are one, as in the direction of the moon. The waning moon is in the upper right corner in which different shades of yellow stand out. It gives the impression that it was a sun.
Landscape features:
The landscape that is in the lower part of the canvas shows a landscape with hills and mountains with slightly marked curves, as well as a town which is full of houses. In addition to wheat fields and olive groves. The church and a cypress are two elements that draw a lot of attention when just looking at the painting. Since these two elements point to the sky.
The colors:
The colors in The Starry Night are distributed as follows:
The white, yellow, green and blue colors that the painter placed in the sky are much more cheerful than the dull tones used for the city. It is observed that the white and yellow colors were part of the creation of the effects of the spirals and draw the viewer's attention. Van Gogh used strokes to accentuate the contrast between the sky and the city.
The city was created with straight lines, squares that give the painting serenity and accentuate the curves of the sky. The painting is made with marked and pasty brushstrokes that create grooves and reliefs in the work. The lines are part of the entire work, which move, snake and undulate throughout the painting, which creates a sense of movement.
Curiosities:
- This work portrays the landscape that Vincent Van Gogh had in the window of the sanatorium room.
- The artist took as inspiration the landscapes he observed but not exactly.
- Van Gogh painted almost a painting every day.
- The artist suffered from epileptic seizures and depression.
- They say that in the city of Arles, in the south of France, where he lived for a time with fellow painter Paul Gauguin, they exchanged canvases and ideas, working nonstop for several weeks.
- At that same time in the City of Arles, it was that the cut of the ear with the knife occurred, which would happen due to differences between the artists.
- They say it was the whole ear, others say just the earlobe.
- They wouldn't let him paint in his room at the sanatorium.
- At the sanitarium, he was assigned an entire space in the basement of the sanitarium to use as a study.
- They did not allow him to have paintings or oils in his room.
After cutting himself with a razor, he voluntarily went to the Saint Paul de Mausole sanatorium in Saint Rémy-de-Provence. There, the author of The Starry Night found the peace and tranquility he so desperately needed to continue his work.
All his paintings were painted during his stay in the sanatorium, among the paintings he made in that period we have:
- The corridors of São Paulo.
- The day to day is his patients and staff.
- Portrait of Madame Trabuc.
- Portrait of the director of the sanatorium.
- A portrait of one of the patients.
- Any detail that caught the attention of the place.
- trees and gardens.
- asylum bank.
For Vincent Van Gogh, the landscape that most caught his attention was the view he had in his room. So he painted many versions of the same landscape with the sky, wheat fields and olive trees at different times of day and in different seasons of the year.
He painted the same landscape with rain or with a radiant sun, while a couple was walking in the sunset or while they were picking the fruits of the trees. But what caused him most concern was painting the same landscape but in a nocturnal version.
He found it exciting to capture the light, activities, and movement of objects at night.
What if he could do in his room, ink or charcoal sketches. These sketches were then taken to his basement studio for retouching or use as a base.
The Starry Night was painted in part using his sketches and memories of places he had visited, in addition to the use of other details; he used it as a combination of the landscape he observed through his window and his imagination.
Analysis
In this painting called The Starry Night, it is observed that the clear sky, the mountains, the grasslands and the olive trees are in the foreground. The small village is under the night sky.
The night in the form of a spiral with a waning moon and large stars. The olive trees and the stars represent their religious past. The spirals is her tormented mind. And the villa is a memory of the town where she grew up in the Netherlands.
Information about his death
It is said that the artist leaves the asylum, he went to a town north of Paris, in charge of the doctor Paul Gachet and close to his brother Theo. Over the course of that time, his health deteriorated, causing him to have more frequent epileptic seizures and suffer from hallucinations. The artist is believed to have shot himself in the chest with a revolver. The artist died in July 1890 at the age of 37.
If you would like to learn more about another painter, The Persistence of Memory