"The Starry Night"
of a expressive night sky over a small hill side village, one of the Dutch Artist's
most celebrated works.
The oil-on-canvas painting is dominated by a night sky roiling with chromatic blue swirls,
a glowing yellow crescent moon and stars rendered as a radiating orbits. One or two cyprees trees,
often describe as flame like, tower over the foreground to the left, their dark branches curling and
swaying the the movement of the sky that they partly obscure. Amid this all this animation, a structured
village sits in the distance on the lower right of the canvas.
Van Gogh painted The Starry Night during his 12 month stay at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum near
Saint-Remy-de-Provence, France, several months after suffering a breakdown in which he severed a part
of his own ear with a razor. While at the asylum, he painted during bursts of productivity that alternated
with moods of despair. As an artist who prefered working from observation, van Gogh was limited to the subject
that surround him-his own likeness, views outside his studio window, and the surrounding countryside that he could
visit with a chaperone.