Starry Night Over the Rhône
Vincent van Gogh (1853 to 1890) · 1888
Night on the river at Arles. Van Gogh stood on the bank of the Rhône in September 1888, a short walk from the Yellow House where he lived, and painted the town's new gas lamps reflected in the water beneath a sky full of stars. The Great Bear hangs above the river. Two boats are moored at the bottom right, and a couple strolls along the shore arm in arm, the only human presence in a vast blue quiet. Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo that the town lit at night, with the stars above, had made him think of the eternal, and that painting darkness with colour rather than black was the whole challenge.
He worked outdoors, by the light of the gas lamps and, according to legend, with candles fixed to the brim of his hat. The sky is not one blue but many: cobalt, ultramarine and a greenish blue near the horizon, each star surrounded by a halo of pale strokes. The lamps of Arles are dabs of orange and yellow whose reflections stretch down the water in long broken lines, and the brushwork in the river runs horizontally to lay the surface flat. Compare it with the far more famous Starry Night in New York painted the following year from the asylum window; that one swirls, this one is calm and observed, a real place at a real hour.
Van Gogh sent the painting to Paris, where it was shown in 1889 at the Salon des Indépendants alongside his Irises. It stayed in private hands until 1975, when it entered the French national collection through a gift with a life interest, arriving at Orsay when the museum opened. It is one of the most loved works in the building. Stand back and notice how the lovers in the foreground echo the two boats, small and paired, under the enormous sky.
Did You Know? Van Gogh listed the exact colours of the sky in a letter to his brother, naming aquamarine, royal blue and the greens and pinks of the stars.
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