The Starry Night

An 1889 oil painting by Vincent van Gogh depicting a swirling night sky above a village. The painting is held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Impasto: A painting technique that applies paint thickly enough to preserve visible texture and brush marks. Van Gogh’s raised strokes make the sky’s movement physically visible on the canvas.
Saint-Paul-de-Mausole: A former monastery in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence that served as an asylum during Vincent van Gogh’s stay there. Van Gogh painted The Starry Night while residing at this asylum.
Starry Night (Van Gogh series): A group of paintings and drawings in which Vincent van Gogh depicted nocturnal skies and scenes. The Starry Night belongs to Van Gogh’s wider exploration of night subjects.
Vincent van Gogh's letters: A body of correspondence by Vincent van Gogh, especially his letters to his brother Theo. Van Gogh’s correspondence provides evidence about his ideas and work around the painting’s creation.
Complementary colors: Pairs of colors positioned opposite each other on a color wheel, often producing strong visual contrast. Blue and yellow contrasts intensify the painting’s stars and moon.
Saint-Rémy-de-Provence: A town in Provence, France, near which Vincent van Gogh lived and worked in 1889. The painting’s landscape draws on the surroundings of Van Gogh’s Saint-Rémy period.
The Starry Night's village: The cluster of buildings beneath the sky in Vincent van Gogh’s 1889 painting The Starry Night. Its church spire and compact houses distinguish the imagined village from the surrounding landscape.
Expressionism: A modern art movement that uses distortion and heightened color to convey subjective experience. Later viewers often connect the painting’s forceful forms with expressionist concerns.
Composition (visual arts): The arrangement of visual elements within an artwork. The cypress, village, and sky establish the painting’s upward movement and balance.
Vincent van Gogh: A Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose works include The Starry Night and Sunflowers. Van Gogh painted the work in June 1889 during his stay in Provence.

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