11 Little-Known Facts About Vincent Van Gogh’s Iconic ‘The Starry Night’

Featuring mesmerizing swirls, a captivating composition, and a magical blend of colors, Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night stands as one of the most celebrated and instantly recognizable masterpieces in the world of art. However, there’s far more to this Starry Night than meets the eye.

1. The Starry Night captures the view from Vincent Van Gogh’s asylum window.

Following a mental health crisis in the winter of 1888, Van Gogh voluntarily admitted himself to the Saint-Paul de Mausole asylum near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in southern France. The view from his window inspired his most famous masterpiece. In a letter to his brother Theo, Van Gogh described, “this morning, I gazed at the countryside from my window long before sunrise, with only the morning star visible, appearing remarkably large.”

2. The iron bars were omitted.

Art experts believe Van Gogh altered the view from his second-floor bedroom window, a conclusion supported by the fact that his painting studio was on the ground floor. He also chose to exclude the window’s iron bars, a detail he mentioned in another letter to Theo. In May 1889, he wrote, “through the barred window, I see a confined field of wheat, a scene reminiscent of a Van Goyen, above which I watch the sunrise in its full splendor.”

3. The village in The Starry Night was an imaginative addition.

From his window, Van Gogh couldn’t have seen Saint-Rémy. Art historians debate whether the village in The Starry Night was inspired by his charcoal sketches of the Provençal town or if it reflects his Dutch heritage.

4. The Starry Night might symbolize mortality.

The towering cypress trees in the foreground, often linked to cemeteries and death, add depth to this Van Gogh quote: “Gazing at the stars fills me with dreams. Why, I wonder, can’t the luminous points in the sky be as reachable as the dots on a map of France? Just as we board a train to Tarascon or Rouen, we embrace death to journey to a star.”

5. This wasn’t Van Gogh’s initial Starry Night.

The globally celebrated The Starry Night was completed in 1889. However, a year earlier, Van Gogh painted his first version, often referred to as Starry Night Over The Rhone. After moving to Arles, France, in 1888, Van Gogh developed a fascination with capturing the night sky’s glow. He experimented with this theme in Café Terrace on the Place du Forum before attempting his initial Starry Night sketch featuring the Rhone River.

6. Van Gogh viewed The Starry Night as a “failure.”

Reflecting on the works from his Saint-Paul Asylum, Saint-Remy series, the artist wrote to Theo, “Overall, I only find the Wheatfield, the Mountain, the Orchard, the Olive trees with the blue hills, the Portrait, and the Entrance to the quarry somewhat good. The rest feels meaningless to me.”

7. The Starry Night features a depiction of Venus.

In 1985, UCLA art historian Albert Boime analyzed Starry Night by comparing it to a planetarium simulation of the night sky on June 19, 1889. The striking resemblance suggested that the “morning star” Van Gogh mentioned in his letter to his brother was, in fact, the planet Venus.

8. Van Gogh sold only one or two paintings during his lifetime—and neither was The Starry Night.

Belgian artist and collector Anna Boch bought the relatively obscure The Red Vineyard at Arles for 400 francs at the Les XX exhibition in 1890. Van Gogh had painted it in November 1888, prior to his mental breakdown and subsequent asylum stay. This significant artwork is now housed at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. Additionally, historian Marc Edo Tralbaut’s biography of Van Gogh references a letter from Theo indicating that a self-portrait by the artist had been sold to a London art dealer.

9. The Starry Night was owned twice by Theo’s widow.

After Van Gogh’s death in 1890, Theo inherited all of his brother’s works. When Theo passed away in 1891, his wife Johanna Gezina van Gogh-Bonger took possession of The Starry Night and numerous other paintings. Van Gogh-Bonger played a pivotal role in compiling and publishing the brothers’ letters, and her relentless efforts to promote Van Gogh’s art through exhibitions significantly contributed to his posthumous fame.

In 1900, Van Gogh-Bonger sold The Starry Night to French poet Julien Leclerq, who later passed it on to Post-Impressionist artist Émile Schuffenecker. By 1906, she repurchased the painting from Schuffenecker to facilitate its transfer to the Oldenzeel Gallery in Rotterdam.

10. The Starry Night now resides in New York, thanks to Lillie P. Bliss.

Bliss, the daughter of a wealthy textile merchant, became a leading collector of modern art in the early 20th century. Alongside Mary Quinn Sullivan and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, she co-founded Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art. After her death in 1931, the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest donated much of her collection to MoMA, forming the core of its holdings during the Great Depression. In 1941, three pieces from Bliss’s collection were sold to enable MoMA’s acquisition of Starry Night.

11. The lights in The Starry Night appear to flicker due to the way the human brain processes visual information.

In an animated TED-Ed video by Avi Ofer, Natalya St. Clair explains how Van Gogh’s painting masterfully captures turbulence, a concept that remains one of the most challenging for physicists to define.