The Starry Night

The asylum

Following his breakdown on December 23, 1888, in which he self-mutilated his left ear, Van Gogh voluntarily checked himself into the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole mental institution on May 8, 1889. Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, a former monastery that catered to the rich, was less than half full when Van Gogh arrived, so he was able to utilize a ground-floor room for painting as well as a second-story bedroom.

Van Gogh’s prolific output of paintings, which he had started in Arles, continued during his year-long stay at the institution at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. He created some of his most well-known pieces at this time, such as the blue self-portrait from September 1889, which is now in the Musée d’Orsay, and the Irises from May 1889, which is currently in the J. Paul Getty Museum. By the time he wrote to his brother Theo on June 18th, stating that he had a fresh study of a starry sky, The Starry Night had been painted by the middle of June.

The painting

It would be incorrect to say that Van Gogh painted The Starry Night from memory, even if he did it during the day at his ground-floor studio. It has been determined to be the scene from his east-facing bedroom window, which Van Gogh painted on at least twenty-one occasions, including The Starry Night. He wrote to his brother Theo on May 23, 1889, “I can see an enclosed square of wheat… above which, in the morning, I watch the sun rise in all its glory” through the iron-barred window.

Van Gogh painted the scene under a variety of weather conditions and at different times of day, including dawn, moonrise, sunny days, cloudy days, windy days, and one rainy day. Van Gogh was permitted to do ink or charcoal sketches on paper in his bedroom, even though the hospital personnel forbade him from painting there.

Eventually, he would build newer versions of his drawings atop earlier ones. The diagonal line entering from the right, which represents the low rolling slopes of the Alpilles mountains, is the visual feature that unites all of these works. Of the twenty-one variations, fifteen show cypress trees beyond the wheat field’s far wall.

In F717 Wheat Field with Cypresses and The Starry Night, for example, Van Gogh brought the trees closer to the image plane by exaggerating their scale.

F611 Mountainous Landscape Behind Saint-Rémy, which is currently in Copenhagen, was one of the first paintings depicting the scene. F1547, The Enclosed Wheatfield After a Storm, is a typical drawing that Van Gogh created for the painting. Whether the artwork was created outside or in his studio is unknown.

He notes that he had been working outside for a few days in his letter reporting it dated June 9. In a letter to his sister Wil dated June 16, 1889, Van Gogh depicted the second of the two landscapes he indicates he was working on. His first en plein air painting in the asylum is F719 Green Wheat Field with Cypress, which is currently in Prague.

A study for it is F1548 Wheatfield, Saint-Rémy de Provence, which is currently in New York. Vincent informed Theo in a letter two days later that he had painted “a starry sky”.

Among the vistas from his bedroom window, the Starry Night is the only one that is nocturnal. “This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big,” Vincent wrote to Theo at the beginning of June.

It has been shown by researchers that Venus, sometimes known as the “morning star,” was visible at dawn in Provence in the spring of 1889 and was almost as brilliant as it could have been at that time. Venus is therefore the brightest “star” in the artwork, located just to the right of the cypress tree.

The Moon is stylized because, according to astronomical data, it was waning gibbous when Van Gogh painted it. Even if the Moon’s phase had been its declining crescent at the time, Van Gogh’s depiction of the Moon would not have been accurate. (See below for other Moon interpretations.) The settlement, which is based on a drawing (F1541v) taken from a hillside above the hamlet of Saint-Rémy, is the only visual component that was obscured from view from Van Gogh’s cell.

It was the first of Van Gogh’s “reminisces of the North” that he was to paint and sketch early the following year. Pickvance believed that F1541v was completed later and that the steeple was more Dutch than Provençal, a conflation of numerous that he had painted and drawn during his Nuenen time. The reverse (F1541r) has a landscape that Hulsker believed was also a study for the painting.

Meanings

Van Gogh wrote a lot of letters, but he didn’t say much about The Starry Night. Van Gogh first wrote that he had painted a starry sky in June. On or around September 20, 1889, he wrote to Theo about the painting and included it in a list of works he was sending to his brother in Paris. He called it a “night study.”

He wrote, “All in all the only things I consider a little good in it are the Wheatfield, the Mountain, the Orchard, the Olive trees with the blue hills and the Portrait and the Entrance to the quarry, and the rest says nothing to me” concerning this list of paintings; “the rest” would include The Starry Night.

The Starry Night was one of the three paintings he chose not to ship out of this batch in order to save money on postage. Lastly, Van Gogh described the painting as a “failure” in a letter to painter Émile Bernard dated late November 1889.

Van Gogh and Bernard Gauguin, in particular, disagreed on whether one should paint “abstractions”—pictures created in the mind, or de tête—or from nature, as Van Gogh favored. Van Gogh described his time with Gauguin, who resided with him from October 23, 1888, until December 25 of the same year, in the letter to Bernard.

“As you know, I let myself get sidetracked into abstraction a couple of times when Gauguin was in Arles. However, my buddy, that was a delusion, and one eventually encounters a brick wall. I’ve had enough of it, yet once more I let myself be misled into aiming for too-big stars, which led to yet another failure. Here, Van Gogh is alluding to the expressionistic swirls that predominate in The Starry Night’s top center section.

In a letter to Vincent dated October 22, 1889, Theo made reference to these visual components: “I sense what preoccupies you in the new canvases like the village in the moonlight [The Starry Night] or the mountains, but I feel that the search for style takes away the real sentiment of things.”

Despite your earlier letter’s assertion that the pursuit of style frequently detracts from other attributes, Vincent replied in early November, “The truth is that I feel quite motivated to pursue style, if you will, but I mean by that a more manly and more methodical drawing.

There is nothing I can do if it will make me more like Gauguin or Bernard. However, I think that you would eventually grow used to it. In a subsequent letter, he wrote, “I know very well that the studies drawn with long, sinuous lines from the last consignment weren’t what they ought to become, however, I dare urge you to believe that in landscapes one will continue to mass things by means of a drawing style that seeks to express the entanglement of the masses.”

Van Gogh, however, consistently rejected Gauguin’s and Bernard’s methods and stuck to his favorite style of painting from nature, even if he occasionally supported them. Van Gogh preferred working in series, just like the impressionists he had encountered in Paris, particularly Claude Monet. He painted the cypresses and wheat fields at Saint-Rémy, and he had produced his sunflower series at Arles. This latter series, along with a minor series of nocturnes he started in Arles, includes The Starry Night.

The challenges of painting such natural scenes—that is, at night—were the limiting factor for the nocturne series. The series’ first picture, Café Terrace at Night, was created in Arles in early September 1888. Later that same month, Starry Night (Over the Rhône) was created. Additional information on Van Gogh’s motives for painting night studies in general and The Starry Night in particular may be found in his written remarks about these paintings.

As Van Gogh wrote to Theo shortly after his arrival in Arles in February 1888, “I need a starry night with cypresses or—perhaps above a field of ripe wheat; there are some really beautiful nights here.” The next week, he wrote to Bernard, “A starry sky is something I should like to try to do, just as in the daytime I am going to try to paint a green meadow spangled with dandelions.”

Like a train on Earth, he thought, “we take death to reach a star.” He likened the stars to dots on a map. Van Gogh seems to still believe in an afterlife despite his disenchantment with religion at this stage of his life. In a letter to Theo following his painting of Starry Night Over the Rhône, he expressed this ambivalence and acknowledged feeling a “tremendous need for, shall I say the word—for religion—so I go outside at night to paint the stars.”

After death, he wrote of residing in an other realm, which he connected to the night sky. “It would be so simple and would account so much for the terrible things in life, which now amaze and wound us so if life had yet another hemisphere, invisible it is true, but where one lands when one dies.” He stated, “Hope is in the stars,” but he quickly clarified that “this earth is a planet too, and consequently a star, or celestial orb.” The Starry Night, he declared categorically, was “not a return to the romantic or to religious ideas.”

In highlighting The Starry Night’s expressionistic elements, renowned art historian Meyer Schapiro claims that the painting was produced under the “pressure of feeling” and that it is a “visionary [painting] inspired by a religious mood.” According to Schapiro, the work’s “hidden content” alludes to the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, which has a “apocalyptic theme of the woman in pain of birth, girded with the sun and moon and crowned with stars, whose newborn child is threatened by the dragon.” (In the same volume, Schapiro also claims to have seen a picture of a mother and child in the clouds in Landscape with Olive Trees, which was painted concurrently and is sometimes thought of as a pendant to The Starry Night.)

Expanding on Schapiro’s methodology, art historian Sven Loevgren describes The Starry Night as a “visionary painting” that “was conceived in a state of great agitation.” He describes the “hallucinatory character of the painting and its violently expressive form,” but he carefully clarifies that Van Gogh did not create it during one of his debilitating episodes.

Van Gogh’s “religiously inclined longing for the beyond” is compared by Loevgren to Walt Whitman’s poetry. He describes The Starry Night as “an infinitely expressive picture which symbolizes the final absorption of the artist by the cosmos” and that it “gives a never-to-be-forgotten sensation of standing on the threshold of eternity.”

In addition to promoting his symbolist thesis on the eleven stars in one of Joseph’s dreams in the Old Testament Book of Genesis, Loevgren commends Schapiro for his “eloquent interpretation” of the painting as an apocalyptic vision. In The Starry Night, Loevgren claims that the visual components “are visualized in purely symbolic terms” and that “the cypress is the tree of death in the Mediterranean countries.”

In addition, art historian Lauren Soth identifies a symbolist subtext in The Starry Night, describing it as a “sublimated image of [Van Gogh’s] deepest religious feelings” and a “traditional religious subject in disguise.” Soth hypothesizes that Van Gogh employed Prussian blue and citron yellow to depict Christ in The Starry Night because of the artist’s professed love for Eugène Delacroix’s paintings, particularly the earlier painter’s usage of these hues in Christ-related works. Because Schapiro and Loevgren’s biblical interpretations rely on a view of the crescent moon as including aspects of the Sun, he challenges them. He claims that it is only a crescent moon, which Van Gogh also saw symbolically as “consolation.”

Albert Boime, an art historian, gives his analysis of The Starry Night in the context of these symbolist interpretations. As previously mentioned, Boime has demonstrated that the painting captures both the celestial and geographical aspects of Van Gogh’s view from his asylum window, recognizing both Venus and the constellation Aries.

According to his theory, the brilliant aureole surrounding the final crescent moon is a holdover from the initial gibbous moon that Van Gogh had originally meant to paint but “reverted to a more traditional image” of.

He describes how Van Gogh’s belief in an afterlife on stars or planets may have been influenced by his enthusiasm in the works of Jules Verne and Victor Hugo. He offers a thorough analysis of the well reported developments in astronomy that occurred during Van Gogh’s lifetime.

Boime claims that although Van Gogh never made reference to the astronomer Camille Flammarion in his correspondence, he must have been aware of Flammarion’s well-known illustrated books, which featured illustrations of spiral nebulae—as galaxies were then known—as they were observed and captured on camera by telescopes.

According to Boime, the whirling object in the middle of the sky in The Starry Night is either a comet or a spiral galaxy, both of which have been depicted in popular culture. He claims that the settlement and the swirls in the sky are the only aspects of the artwork that are not realistic. Van Gogh’s perception of the universe as a living, breathing place is reflected in these swirls.

Charles A. Whitney, a Harvard astronomer, studied The Starry Night from an astronomical perspective concurrently with but separate from Boime, who worked at U.C.L.A. for much his whole career. Whitney agrees with Boime that Venus was visible in Provence at the time the picture was created, even if he is not as positive about the constellation Aries as Boime is. He also notices a spiral galaxy in the sky, but he credits William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, an Anglo-Irish astronomer, for creating the original, which Flammarion copied.

Whitney further speculates that the swirls in the sky may be wind, bringing to mind the mistral that so profoundly impacted Van Gogh during his 27-month stay in Provence. (In July 1889, little than a month after painting The Starry Night, the mistral caused his first collapse after he was sent to the institution.) According to Boime’s theory, the first rays of morning are shown by the paler blue hues just above the horizon.

According to several interpretations, the settlement is either based on a drawing that Van Gogh produced of the town of Saint-Rémy or it is a memory of his native Netherlands. Either way, it is an illusory part of the image that cannot be seen through the asylum bedroom window.

Although it is up for discussion whether Van Gogh meant for the cypress trees in The Starry Night to have such a symbolic connotation, they have long been connected to death in European culture. In a letter to Bernard in April 1888, Van Gogh described “funereal cypresses,” which may be interpreted as “stately oaks” or “weeping willows.”

He wrote to his brother Theo a week after painting The Starry Night, “I can’t get the cypresses out of my head. It amazes me that they haven’t been completed yet when I look at them, thus I would like to create something similar to the sunflower canvases.” The message also included a reference to “two studies of cypresses of that difficult shade of bottle green.” According to these claims, Van Gogh was more drawn to the trees’ formal characteristics than their metaphorical meaning.

The painting’s cypress is described by Schapiro as a “vague symbol of a human striving.” Boime describes it as the “symbolic counterpart of Van Gogh’s own striving for the Infinite through non-orthodox channels.” Cypresses “function as rustic and natural obelisks” for Van Gogh, according to art historian Vojtech Jirat-Wasiutynski, who claims that they serve as a “link between the heavens and the earth.” (While some commenters perceive a single tree, some perceive two or more.) According to Loevgren, “the cypress is the tree of death in the Mediterranean countries.”

The Starry Night “is overtly stamped as a ‘abstraction'” due to “its arbitrary collage of separate motifs,” according to art historian Ronald Pickvance. Pickvance asserts that the cypress trees, which face east from Van Gogh’s chamber, were not visible, and he attributes them to Van Gogh’s imagination along with the settlement and the swirls in the sky.

Jirat-Wasiutyński and Boime both claim that the cypresses were visible in the east. According to Van Gogh biographers Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, Van Gogh “telescoped” the view in some of the photographs of the vista from his window, which makes sense for a work that features the Morning Star. The planet’s brightness is increased by this compression of depth.

Van Gogh’s claim that The Starry Night is “an exaggeration from the point of view of arrangement” is brought up by Soth in support of his claim that the painting is “an amalgam of images.” Van Gogh did not, however, necessarily use “arrangement” as a synonym for “composition.”

When Van Gogh said, “The olive trees with white cloud and background of mountains, as well as the Moonrise and the Night effect,” he was referring to three paintings, including The Starry Night. He also said that “these are exaggerations from the point of view of the arrangement, their lines are contorted like those of the ancient woodcuts.”

Everyone agrees that the first two images depict actual, non-composite perspectives of their topics. The exaggerated color and brushwork that Theo mentioned when he chastised Van Gogh for his “search for style [that] takes away the real sentiment of things” in The Starry Night are what the three images do have in common.

Van Gogh used the phrase “arrangement” to describe color on two more times during this period, much like James Abbott McNeill Whistler did. “As an arrangement of colors: the reds moving through to pure oranges, intensifying even more in the flesh tones up to the chromes, passing into the pinks, and marrying with the olive and Veronese greens,” he wrote in a January 1889 letter to Gauguin. It is the best impressionist color combination I have ever created.

(La Berceuse, a realistic portrait of Augustine Roulin with a creative floral backdrop, is the artwork to which he alludes.) And in late November 1889, I wrote to Bernard: “But this is enough for you to understand that I would like to see things of yours again, like the painting you have with Gauguin, those Breton women strolling in a meadow, whose arrangement is so lovely, the color so inherently unique.” Ah, you’re swapping that for something—must one speak the word—something artificial—something affected.”

Naifeh and Smith explore The Starry Night in relation to Van Gogh’s mental disorder, which they define as temporal lobe epilepsy, or latent epilepsy, without going so far as to refer to the painting as a hallucinatory vision.

“Not the kind,” they write, “known since antiquity, that caused the body to collapse and the limbs to jerk (which was sometimes referred to as ‘the falling sickness’), but a mental epilepsy—a seizing up of the mind: a collapse of thought, perception, reason, and emotion that manifested itself entirely in the brain and frequently prompted bizarre, dramatic behavior.”In the brain, the seizures’ symptoms “resembled fireworks of electrical impulses.”

In July 1889, Van Gogh had his second breakdown in seven months. The roots of this collapse were evident when Van Gogh created The Starry Night, according to Naifeh and Smith, who speculate that by allowing his imagination to run wild, “his defenses had been breached.” They argue that Van Gogh poured himself into painting the stars on that mid-June day while in a “state of heightened reality,” with all the other components of the work in place. The result was “a night sky unlike any other the world had ever seen with ordinary eyes.” His ideas and the mood he was in are reflected in the artwork. There is always hope for the future, even in the face of gloom.

Origin

On September 28, 1889, Van Gogh delivered The Starry Night, along with nine or ten additional works, to Theo in Paris after first keeping it to himself. In January 1891, Theo passed away less than six months after Vincent. Van Gogh’s legacy was taken care of by Jo, Theo’s wife. She sold the artwork to Julien Leclercq, a poet, in Paris in 1900.

Émile Schuffenecker, Gauguin’s longtime friend, purchased it from Leclercq in 1901. Jo repurchased the painting from Schuffenecker and sold it to Rotterdam’s Oldenzeel Gallery in 1906. Georgette P. van Stolk of Rotterdam owned it from 1906 until 1938, when she sold it to Paul Rosenberg of Paris and New York. The 1941 purchase of the picture by the Museum of Modern Art was made possible by Rosenberg.

Painting materials

Scientists from the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Rochester Institute of Technology studied the artwork. According to the pigment study, Van Gogh used the uncommon pigments indian yellow and zinc yellow for the stars and moon, while ultramarine and cobalt blue were used to create the sky.

Details of The Starry Night by Van Gogh, which is on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Some Mystery about The Starry Night

1. Symbolism of the Swirling Sky: The swirling sky in The Starry Night has been interpreted as turbulent emotional turmoil, but its true meaning remains debated.
2. Representation of Mental Health: Some believe the painting reflects van Gogh’s struggles with mental health, as it was painted during his stay at an asylum.
3. Scientific Accuracy of Star Patterns: Astronomers suggest the painting depicts a true-to-life night sky, possibly inspired by the view outside his room in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.
4. Inspiration from Religious Texts: Some scholars think van Gogh’s swirling skies were influenced by Biblical or mystical literature he read during his lifetime.
5. The Cypress Tree Symbolism: The dark cypress tree in the foreground might represent death, as cypress trees are often associated with cemeteries.
6. Meaning of the Crescent Moon: The waxing crescent moon has symbolic meaning, potentially representing hope or the new beginnings van Gogh sought.
7. Echoes of Japanese Woodblock Prints: The Starry Night may reflect the influence of Japanese art, which van Gogh admired, especially in its composition and swirling lines.
8. Representation of Order and Chaos: The painting contrasts chaotic skies with calm, structured buildings, possibly symbolizing van Gogh’s inner conflict.
9. The Question of Multiple Stars: Some wonder if the bright stars represent the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades, though van Gogh didn’t clarify their significance.
10. Cosmic Inspiration: Theories suggest van Gogh was inspired by scientific observations of the cosmos, including new theories about turbulence and swirling patterns.
11. Hidden Self-Portrait: Some argue the painting reflects an abstract self-portrait, with swirling skies symbolizing his inner turbulence.
12. Influence of Whirling Dervishes: It’s been proposed that van Gogh might have been inspired by the mystic dances of whirling dervishes, as seen in similar swirling patterns.
13. Potential Tribute to his Late Brother: The painting might have been a tribute to Theo, van Gogh’s brother and closest confidant.
14. Biblical Imagery: Van Gogh’s religious beliefs could have inspired celestial imagery, as he often expressed his desire to capture divine light in his work.
15. Reflections of a Dreamscape: Some wonder if The Starry Night depicts a dreamscape rather than a real night sky.
16. Influence of Post-Impressionism: The painting showcases distinct Post-Impressionist techniques, with exaggerated brushstrokes and colors.
17. Vincent’s Signature Brushstrokes: Van Gogh’s thick, exaggerated brushstrokes give life to the stars and might reflect his mental state.
18. The Mystery of the White Light Source: Some speculate about the white light source in the painting, which doesn’t appear in the actual night sky.
19. Influence of Asylum Life: Van Gogh’s time in the Saint-Rémy asylum influenced his emotional state, potentially visible in the painting’s chaotic sky.
20. Unusual Color Palette: The choice of vibrant blues and yellows for night contrasts with conventional darker tones used for night skies.
21. Position of the Stars and Moon: Astronomers have debated whether van Gogh positioned the stars and moon as accurately as possible or as symbols.
22. Impact of Epileptic Seizures: Some suggest that van Gogh’s epilepsy affected his perception, leading to the unique swirling patterns.
23. Influence of Edgar Allan Poe’s Writings: Scholars speculate that van Gogh was inspired by the mystical and cosmic themes of Poe.
24. Metaphor of Transience: The swirling skies may reflect the impermanence of life, a theme van Gogh often explored.
25. Astrological Interpretations: Some believe the celestial patterns hold astrological meaning, depicting a message about fate or destiny.
26. Hidden Fibonacci Sequence: Art analysts have found patterns resembling the Fibonacci sequence, adding a mathematical mystery.
27. Echo of Other Works: The Starry Night might subtly reflect van Gogh’s earlier pieces, blending aspects of his previous works.
28. Inspiration from Jules Verne: Verne’s novel From the Earth to the Moon may have inspired van Gogh’s cosmic swirls.
29. Representation of an Apocalyptic Vision: The turbulent sky has led some to interpret the painting as a vision of the apocalypse.
30. Personal Symbolism of the Village: The darkened village may represent van Gogh’s feelings of isolation from society.
31. Unknown Initial Purpose: There’s debate on whether van Gogh intended The Starry Night as an emotional outlet or a study in technique.
32. Representation of Hope Amid Turmoil: The contrasting colors of the sky and stars have been seen as symbols of hope amid van Gogh’s personal struggles.
33. Unexplained Brushstroke Patterns: The swirl patterns remain unique among van Gogh’s works, possibly reflecting his mental or emotional state.
34. Imagery of the Soul’s Journey: Some believe the painting captures the soul’s journey, echoing van Gogh’s desire to explore spirituality.
35. Symbol of Creative Release: The artwork might symbolize van Gogh’s creative expression amid restrictions during his asylum stay.
36. Connection to Astral Projection: Some interpret the painting as a representation of astral projection or out-of-body experience.
37. Echo of the Divine: Van Gogh may have aimed to capture divine energy in the cosmic swirls of the sky.
38. Influence of the Mistral Winds: The powerful winds of Provence, known as the mistral, could have inspired the swirling sky.
39. Resemblance to Ancient Astronomy: The painting has been compared to ancient cosmic depictions, like early star maps.
40. Hint of the Afterlife: The cypress tree may represent the boundary between life and death.
41. Recreation of the Milky Way: Van Gogh’s sky might be an attempt to visually capture the Milky Way.
42. Hidden Faces in the Swirls: Some viewers see human faces or forms within the swirling patterns.
43. Van Gogh’s Potential Synesthesia: There’s speculation that van Gogh had synesthesia, blending sound and color.
44. Echoes of Dante’s Inferno: The cypress and swirling forms could subtly allude to Dante’s visions of heaven and hell.
45. Similarity to Microscopic Imagery: The swirls have been compared to cellular or microscopic views, adding a scientific dimension.
46. Expression of Loneliness: The isolated village and cosmic swirls may depict van Gogh’s sense of alienation.
47. Influence of Parisian Nightlife: Van Gogh’s time in Paris influenced his bold colors, possibly inspiring The Starry Night’s palette.
48. Unfinished Brushstrokes: Some sections appear incomplete, hinting at the artist’s unstable state.
49. Mystery of the Cross-Shaped Stars: The stars are cross-shaped, an unusual artistic choice possibly symbolizing spirituality.
50. Link to Optical Illusions: The sky may include optical illusion elements, creating an unnatural sense of motion.
51. Representation of a Divine Vision: Some view The Starry Night as capturing van Gogh’s interpretation of God’s creation.
52. Symbol of Artistic Struggle: The painting’s intensity could mirror van Gogh’s lifelong struggle for recognition.
53. Van Gogh’s Longing for Freedom: The sky’s vastness may represent his yearning for freedom from confinement.
54. Reflections of Childhood Memories: Van Gogh’s letters indicate a fascination with stars from a young age.
55. Astrological Symbols in the Stars: Some believe the stars carry hidden astrological meanings.
56. Imagery of Psychological Rebirth: The contrast between dark earth and bright stars could symbolize transformation.
57. Unknown Inspiration Behind the Cypress: There’s debate on whether the cypress represents death or the artist’s yearning for connection.
58. Echoes of Nebular Studies: Scientists have noted similarities between the painting and nebular forms observed in telescopes.
59. Possible Representation of Grief: The swirling skies may reflect grief over his difficult relationships.
60. Hint at Imprisonment: The painting may symbolize his feelings of captivity in the asylum.
61. Metaphor of His Life’s Unpredictability: The chaotic sky echoes the unpredictability of van Gogh’s life.
62. Hint of Classical Art Influence: The composition shows hints of classical art methods, despite van Gogh’s modernist style.
63. Mental Illness in the Swirls: Experts see van Gogh’s psychological struggles manifested in the brushstrokes.
64. Representation of Energy Fields: Modern interpretations view the swirls as symbolic of energy fields.
65. Religious Imagery in the Clouds: Some scholars believe the swirling clouds suggest angelic forms.
66. Potential Influence from Tarot Cards: Elements of The Starry Night may reflect symbolic aspects found in Tarot imagery.
67. Layering of Time and Space: The juxtaposition of celestial elements suggests timelessness.
68. Echoes of Existential Questions: The vastness of the sky reflects van Gogh’s existential inquiries about life’s purpose.
69. Possibility of Hidden Math Patterns: Analysts have studied whether hidden geometrical patterns are present.
70. Reflection of Geometric Art: The painting may represent a fusion of impressionism with geometry.
71. Mirror of a Spiritual Awakening: The painting’s intensity suggests a moment of spiritual awakening.
72. Possible Tribute to Other Artists: Scholars debate if van Gogh was inspired by other artists in his circle.
73. Symbol of Universal Connection: The painting might capture humanity’s connection to the cosmos.
74. Impression of Van Gogh’s Imagination: The painting could simply represent his imagination rather than a physical place.
75. Meditation on Mortality: Some view the dark tree as van Gogh’s contemplation on death.
76. The Idea of Celestial Harmony: The sky and stars might represent harmony in an otherwise chaotic world.
77. Influence of Van Gogh’s Color Theory: His choice of color may symbolize emotions beyond what’s visible.
78. Mystery of the Rarely Shown Moon: The moon’s unique orientation raises questions about its symbolism.
79. Religious Text Influences: Some believe that the painting draws from religious texts he encountered in his studies.
80. The Hidden Meaning of Light: The bold use of yellow may represent the theme of hope.
81. An Open Invitation to Interpretation: Ultimately, the mystery remains that van Gogh left no specific explanations, inviting endless interpretations.