Starry Night Over the Rhone
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| Artist | Vincent van Gogh |
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| Year | 1888 |
| Type | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 72.5 cm × 92 cm (28.5 in × 36.2 in) |
| Location | Musée d’Orsay, Paris |
Starry Night Over the Rhone (September 1888) is one of Vincent van Gogh’s paintings of Arles at night; it was painted at a spot on the banks of river which was only a minute or two’s walk from the Yellow House on the Place Lamartine which Van Gogh was renting at the time. The night sky and the effects of light at night provided the subject for some of his more famous oil paintings, including Cafe Terrace at Night (painted earlier the same month) and the later canvas from Saint-Rémy, The Starry Night.
The oil painting was first exhibited in 1889 at the annual exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants in Paris, together with the Irises. The latter was added by Theo, while Vincent had proposed one of his paintings from the public gardens in Arles, most probably the version now in the Phillips Collection.
Subject matter
The view is from the quay (a waterside street) on the east side of the Rhone, into the knee of the river towards the western shore: coming down from the north, the Rhone turns to the right at this point to surround the rocks on which Arles is built. From the towers of Saint-Julien and Saint-Trophime at the left, the spectator follows the east bank up to the iron bridge connecting Arles to the suburb of Trinquetaille on the right, western bank. This implies a view from Place Lamartine towards the south-west.
Genesis
Van Gogh announced and described this composition in a letter to his brother Theo: Included a small sketch of a 30 square canvas – in short the starry sky painted by night, actually under a gas jet. The sky is aquamarine, the water is royal blue, the ground is mauve. The town is blue and purple. The gas is yellow and the reflections are russet gold descending down to green-bronze. On the aquamarine field of the sky the Great Bear is a sparkling green and pink, whose discreet paleness contrasts with the brutal gold of the gas. Two colourful figurines of lovers in the foreground.
- This is definitely not the spot where Ursa Major can be seen from Place Lamartine: Its common place is in the North, i.e., in the back of the spectator.
- The foreground indicates heavy rework, wet-in-wet, as soon as the first state was finished. The letter sketches executed at this time probably are based on the original composition.
Colours of the Night
The challenge of oil painting at night intrigued Van Gogh. The vantage point he chose for Starry Night Over the Rhone allowed him to capture the reflections of the gas lighting in Arles across the glimmering blue water of the Rhône. In the foreground, two lovers stroll by the banks of the river.
Depicting color was of great importance to Van Gogh. In letters to his brother, Theo van Gogh, he often described objects in his paintings in terms of color. His night paintings, including Starry Night Over the Rhone, emphasize the importance he placed in capturing the sparkling colors of the night sky and the artificial lighting that was new to this period.
Vincent van Gogh
| Vincent van Gogh | |
|---|---|
 Self-portrait (1887), Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Birth name | Vincent Willem van Gogh |
| Born | 30 March 1853 (1853-03-30) Zundert, Netherlands |
| Died | 29 July 1890 (1890-07-30) (aged 37) Auvers-sur-Oise, France |
| Nationality | Dutch |
| Field | Painter |
| Movement | Post-Impressionism |
| Works | The Potato Eaters, Sunflowers, The Starry Night, Irises, Portrait of Dr. Gachet |
Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work had a far-reaching influence on 20th century art for its vivid colors and emotional impact. He suffered from anxiety and increasingly frequent bouts of mental illness throughout his life, and died largely unknown, at the age of 37, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Little appreciated during his lifetime, his fame grew in the years after his death. Today, he is widely regarded as one of history’s greatest painters and an important contributor to the foundations of modern art. Van Gogh did not begin painting until his late twenties, and most of his best-known works were produced during his final two years. He produced more than 2,000 artworks, consisting of around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches. Although he was little known during his lifetime, his work was a strong influence on the Modernist art that followed. Today many of his pieces—including his numerous self portraits, landscapes, portraits and sunflowers—are among the world’s most recognizable and expensive works of art.
Van Gogh spent his early adulthood working for a firm of art dealers and traveled between The Hague, London and Paris, after which he taught in England. An early vocational aspiration was to become a pastor and preach the gospel, and from 1879 he worked as a missionary in a mining region in Belgium. During this time he began to sketch people from the local community, and in 1885 painted his first major work The Potato Eaters. His palette at the time consisted mainly of sombre earth tones and showed no sign of the vivid coloration that distinguished his later work. In March 1886, he moved to Paris and discovered the French Impressionists. Later he moved to the south of France and was taken by the strong sunlight he found there. His work grew brighter in color and he developed the unique and highly recognizable style which became fully realized during his stay in Arles in 1888.
The extent to which his mental illness affected his painting has been a subject of speculation since his death. Despite a widespread tendency to romanticise his ill health, modern critics see an artist deeply frustrated by the inactivity and incoherence brought about by his bouts of sickness. According to art critic Robert Hughes, Van Gogh’s late works show an artist at the height of his ability, completely in control and “longing for concision and grace”.
