Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 73 views

    The Starry Night

    Uploaded by

    daniel horne
    Van Gogh painted The Starry Night in 1889 while residing in an asylum in southern France, finding inspiration from the night sky he observed from his window. The painting depicts a starry sky filled with swirling patterns and bright orbs like Venus and the crescent moon, above a village with houses and a church. A cypress tree reaches from the foreground into the sky, representing a link between life and death. While based on van Gogh's observations, the painting also incorporates his memories and emotions. It combines ordered composition with expressive brushstrokes and thick paint to portray a night that was "much more alive and richly colored" to the artist.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    The Starry Night

    Uploaded by

    daniel horne
    73 views2 pages
    Van Gogh painted The Starry Night in 1889 while residing in an asylum in southern France, finding inspiration from the night sky he observed from his window. The painting depicts a starry sky filled with swirling patterns and bright orbs like Venus and the crescent moon, above a village with houses and a church. A cypress tree reaches from the foreground into the sky, representing a link between life and death. While based on van Gogh's observations, the painting also incorporates his memories and emotions. It combines ordered composition with expressive brushstrokes and thick paint to portray a night that was "much more alive and richly colored" to the artist.

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    Van Gogh painted The Starry Night in 1889 while residing in an asylum in southern France, finding inspiration from the night sky he observed from his window. The painting depicts a starry sky filled with swirling patterns and bright orbs like Venus and the crescent moon, above a village with houses and a church. A cypress tree reaches from the foreground into the sky, representing a link between life and death. While based on van Gogh's observations, the painting also incorporates his memories and emotions. It combines ordered composition with expressive brushstrokes and thick paint to portray a night that was "much more alive and richly colored" to the artist.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    73 views2 pages

    The Starry Night

    Uploaded by

    daniel horne
    Van Gogh painted The Starry Night in 1889 while residing in an asylum in southern France, finding inspiration from the night sky he observed from his window. The painting depicts a starry sky filled with swirling patterns and bright orbs like Venus and the crescent moon, above a village with houses and a church. A cypress tree reaches from the foreground into the sky, representing a link between life and death. While based on van Gogh's observations, the painting also incorporates his memories and emotions. It combines ordered composition with expressive brushstrokes and thick paint to portray a night that was "much more alive and richly colored" to the artist.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 2

    "This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise, with

    nothing but the morning star, which looked very big," wrote van Gogh to his brother
    Theo, describing his inspiration for one of his best-known paintings, The Starry Night
    (1889). The window to which he refers was in the Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy,
    in southern France, where he sought respite from his emotional suffering while
    continuing to make art.

    This mid-scale, oil-on-canvas painting is dominated by a moon- and star-filled night


    sky. It takes up three-quarters of the picture plane and appears turbulent, even
    agitated, with intensely swirling patterns that seem to roll across its surface like
    waves. It is pocked with bright orbs-including the crescent moon to the far right, and
    Venus, the morning star, to the left of center-surrounded by concentric circles of
    radiant white and yellow light.

    Beneath this expressive sky sits a hushed village of humble houses surrounding a
    church, whose steeple rises sharply above the undulating blue-black mountains in
    the background. A cypress tree sits at the foreground of this night scene. Flame-like,
    it reaches almost to the top edge of the canvas, serving as a visual link between land
    and sky. Considered symbolically, the cypress could be seen as a bridge between
    life, as represented by the earth, and death, as represented by the sky, commonly
    associated with heaven. Cypresses were also regarded as trees of the graveyard
    and mourning. "But the sight of the stars always makes me dream," van Gogh once
    wrote. "Why, I say to myself, should the spots of light in the firmament be less
    accessible to us than the black spots on the map of France? Just as we take the
    train to go to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to go to a star."

    The Starry Night is based on van Gogh's direct observations as well as his
    imagination, memories, and emotions. The steeple of the church, for example,
    resembles those common in his native Holland, not in France. The whirling forms in
    the sky, on the other hand, match published astronomical observations of clouds of
    dust and gas known as nebulae. At once balanced and expressive, the composition
    is structured by his ordered placement of the cypress, steeple, and central nebulae,
    while his countless short brushstrokes and thickly applied paint set its surface in
    roiling motion. Such a combination of visual contrasts was generated by an artist
    who found beauty and interest in the night, which, for him, was "much more alive and
    richly colored than the day."

    Observation and Imagination in The Starry Night (1889)

    ReadWorks.org © 2017 The Museum of Modern Art. All rights reserved. Used by Permission

    You might also like

    pFad - Phonifier reborn

    Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

    Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


    Alternative Proxies:

    Alternative Proxy

    pFad Proxy

    pFad v3 Proxy

    pFad v4 Proxy