The Starry Night

  

Moderately abstract landscape, an oil on canvas, painting, painted by Vincent van Gogh just months before his tragic suicide, The Starry Night is perhaps one of his greatest masterpieces. 

In the work, van Gogh portrays the view from the east-facing window of his asylum room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, just before sunrise, with the addition of a nameless, or probably an imaginary, European village amidst a dark wilderness, complete with dampened lights.  

The painting is dominated by a night sky roiling with chromatic blue swirls, a glowing yellow crescent moon, and stars rendered as radiating orbs, and among the yellow glowing circles, one could miss the presence of Venus, probably signifying how close it was to the earth, centuries ago. 

 One or two cypress trees, often described as flame-like, tower over the foreground to the left, their dark branches curling and swaying to the movement of the sky that they partly obscure. Amid all this animation, a structured village sits in the distance on the lower right of the canvas. Straight controlled lines make up the small cottages and the slender steeple of a church, which rises as a beacon against rolling blue hills. The glowing yellow squares of the houses suggest the welcoming lights of peaceful homes, creating a calm corner amid the painting’s turbulence. 

Some buildings manage to emit just enough light to be noticed, but others, including, notably, the church, are dark and unwelcoming. However, the real action is what is going on above the town, where the moon and stars light up the sky. Light moves across the sky in great sweeps and strokes, defeating the dark sky wherever it is encountered. 

However, the stars are not enough to light up the whole sky, and between the viewer, the town, and the stars, there are vast fields of dark blue, a constant reminder of the depression and fear felt throughout the artist's life. Despite the best efforts of the stars above and the town below, the darkness still is not completely overcome.