Starry Night

Vincent van Gogh
Artist Vincent van Gogh
Date 1889
Medium Oil on canvas
Collection Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
Copyright Public domain. Free for personal & commercial use.

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About the Artist

Vincent van Gogh
Dutch (1853–1890)
Dutch post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh, born in Zundert, Netherlands, revolutionized modern art with his emotive brushwork and vivid color palettes. Despite a turbulent life marked by mental illness and poverty, he produced over 2,000 artworks, including masterpieces like The Starry Night and Sunflowers. His career began in earnest at age 27 after abandoning earlier pursuits in art dealing and religious ministry. Van Gogh’s work, initially dismissed as chaotic, later became foundational to Expressionism and Fauvism. He died by suicide at 37, leaving a legacy that reshaped 20th-century art.

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HEX color palette extracted from Starry Night-palette by Vincent van Gogh
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Artwork Story

Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night swirls with an almost hypnotic energy, its bold blues and yellows colliding in a sky alive with movement. Thick, rhythmic brushstrokes twist like celestial rivers, pulling the viewer into a dreamscape where the ordinary village below seems dwarfed by the vast, turbulent heavens. The cypress tree in the foreground stretches upward like a dark flame, bridging earth and sky, while the stars themselves pulse with an otherworldly glow—less like distant points of light and more like living entities. Van Gogh painted this while confined to an asylum, transforming his isolation into a vision that feels both deeply personal and universally stirring.

What makes Starry Night so mesmerizing isn’t just its vibrant colors or dynamic composition, but the way it captures a fleeting moment of awe—the kind that makes you stop and stare at the night sky, forgetting everything else. The village sleeps, but the cosmos above thrums with restless energy, as if the artist poured his own turmoil and wonder onto the canvas. Even the moon wears a halo, radiant and slightly off-kilter, mirroring van Gogh’s unique perspective. It’s a painting that refuses to sit still, inviting you to lose yourself in its whirlpool of stars.

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