Magnet Vincent van Gogh - The Starry Night, 1888

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
Starry Night, 1888
Oil on canvas. H. 72.5; W. 92 cm
Donation of Mr and Mrs Robert Khan-Sriber, in memory of Mr and Mrs Fernand Moch, 1975
© Musée d'Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt

From the moment of his arrival in Arles, on 8 February 1888, Van Gogh was...

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
Starry Night, 1888
Oil on canvas. H. 72.5; W. 92 cm
Donation of Mr and Mrs Robert Khan-Sriber, in memory of Mr and Mrs Fernand Moch, 1975
© Musée d'Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt

From the moment of his arrival in Arles, on 8 February 1888, Van Gogh was constantly preoccupied with the representation of "night effects". In April 1888, he wrote to his brother Theo: "I need a starry night with cypresses or maybe above a field of ripe wheat." In June, he confided to the painter Emile Bernard: "But when shall I ever paint the Starry Sky, this painting that keeps haunting me" and, in September, in a letter to his sister, he evoked the same subject: "Often it seems to me night is even more richly coloured than day". During the same month of September, he finally realised his obsessive project.