Van Gogh’s Starry Night over the Rhône reveals more of its mysteries – The Art Newspaper

Van Gogh’s Starry Evening over the Rhône (September 1888) provides a marvellous perception into the artist’s life and work in Arles, in Provence. Seeing each the portray, now on the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and the place the place it was created presents a beautiful alternative to work out what got here from the precise view—and, importantly, what emerged from Van Gogh’s creative creativeness.

To start with the plain, the celebrities of the depicted Plough (or Huge Dipper) would by no means look fairly so outstanding, even within the comparatively muted synthetic mild of Nineteenth-century Arles. Within the precise sky, the Plough factors to the North Star, so these stars would have appeared behind Van Gogh when he was wanting south on the view in direction of the centre of Arles. He moved the Plough to the alternative a part of the sky, with the intention to embody the universe’s most recognisable set of stars in his portray.

Van Gogh framed his view from the small port on the northern finish of Arles, on the sting of Place Lamartine. He will need to have stood on the embankment, simply above a sandbar that was used for loading and unloading boats. His dwelling, the Yellow Home, lay simply three minutes’ stroll away on the opposite facet of the general public backyard. The view of the Rhône is one which he would have seen just about day by day.

The road lamps alongside the Rhône embankment would have been far dimmer than these he depicted. They have been gaslights, which then had a brightness of round 20 watts (a typical family bulb as we speak is 60 watts). Van Gogh has positioned them roughly each 100m, so even the closest one within the portray would hardly have been noticeable. Essentially the most distant lamp in his image would have been practically a kilometre away, so fully invisible.

Gentle from the road lamps would have barely mirrored within the river. Not solely have been the lights very weak, however the water of the Rhône hardly offers a mirror-like floor; it rushes previous Arles on its solution to the Mediterranean.

Vincent wrote to his brother Theo on 29 September 1888 that the image was “truly painted at night time, beneath a gas-lamp”. He might have outlined the scene by the riverside, though he most likely did many of the portray again within the consolation of his studio. A long time later, the story emerged that whereas on the riverside he had labored sporting a hat with candles positioned across the brim. This appears impossible as such headgear would have been most impractical, in addition to extremely harmful.

Van Gogh introduced a fairly correct view of the horizon within the portray. The historic centre of Arles is on the left. Then comes the bridge over the Rhône (though barely seen within the portray, it’s above the marginally darker space of water within the centre). Lastly, the small strip of the suburb of Trinquetaille, on the opposite facet of the river, will be seen on the proper of the composition.

Within the foreground Van Gogh depicted two sailboats moored by the sandbar, a characteristic which can be seen in one in all his personal drawings and in an early postcard.

A while after Van Gogh had stuffed his canvas he had second ideas and basically reworked the lower-left nook. However his authentic composition, now overpainted, will be seen in two small sketches which he made only a few days after the preliminary portray. These sketches depict an extended sandbank on the left.

Within the portray, as lastly reworked, Van Gogh turned the lower-left edge into water, making the sandbar a lot smaller. This bigger expanse of water provides extra emphasis to the reflections of the road lamps.

Van Gogh was happy with the portray and selected it as one in all two which he needed to indicate on the exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants in Paris in September 1889. It stays unsure whether or not he altered his composition in autumn 1888, inside a number of weeks of doing the unique image, or in spring 1889, to enhance it for the exhibition.

If one will get near the image (not straightforward when it’s surrounded by crowds within the Paris museum), the later painted space of water within the decrease left is clearly seen over the initially bigger sandbank, because the instructions of the brushwork are fairly totally different.

The Indépendants catalogue named the image as Nuit étoilée (Starry Evening). This evocative title has caught, reinforcing its attraction as one of many artist’s most beloved work (it shouldn’t be confused along with his second Starry Evening image of June 1889, now at New York’s Museum of Fashionable Artwork).

When the Indépendants present opened in September 1889 the critic Félix Fénéon wrote in regards to the Rhône scene: “Mr van Gogh is a diverting colourist even in eccentricities like his Starry Evening: on the sky, criss-crossed in coarse basketwork with a flat brush, cones of white, pink and yellow, stars, have been utilized straight from the tube; orange triangles are being swept away within the river, and close to some moored boats unusually sinister beings hasten by.”

Hastening “sinister beings” appears an unlucky interpretation, since Van Gogh meant them as “figures of lovers” strolling arm-in-arm beneath the celebrities. The faceless man, garbed in blue and with a straw hat, bears a superficial resemblance to the artist himself. Some commentators have seen it as a self-portrait, though that is maybe going too far.

For Van Gogh, the couple are there so as to add human curiosity and scale. Positioned upright on the very backside of the foreground the canvas, they appear to face on the very fringe of the body. Starry Evening over the Rhône represented a key work within the exhibition Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers, at London’s Nationwide Gallery (closed 19 January).

REVISED: Initially revealed on 7 June 2024, this weblog put up was up to date with new info on 22 August 2025.

Martin Bailey is a number one Van Gogh specialist and particular correspondent for The Artwork Newspaper. He has curated exhibitions on the Barbican Artwork Gallery, Compton Verney/Nationwide Gallery of Scotland and Tate Britain.

Martin has written quite a lot of bestselling books on Van Gogh’s years in France: The Sunflowers Are Mine: The Story of Van Gogh’s Masterpiece (Frances Lincoln 2013, UK and US), Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence (Frances Lincoln 2016, UK and US), Starry Evening: Van Gogh on the Asylum (White Lion Publishing 2018, UK and US) and Van Gogh’s Finale: Auvers and the Artist’s Rise to Fame (Frances Lincoln 2021, UK and US). The Sunflowers are Mine (2024, UK and US) and Van Gogh’s Finale (2024, UK and US) are additionally now accessible in a extra compact paperback format.

His different current books embody Dwelling with Vincent van Gogh: The Houses & Landscapes that formed the Artist (White Lion Publishing 2019, UK and US), which offers an summary of the artist’s life. The Illustrated Provence Letters of Van Gogh has been reissued (Batsford 2021, UK and US). My Buddy Van Gogh/Emile Bernard offers the primary English translation of Bernard’s writings on Van Gogh (David Zwirner Books 2023, UKand US).

To contact Martin Bailey, please electronic mail vangogh@theartnewspaper.com

Please word that he doesn’t undertake authentications.

Discover all of Martin’s adventures with Van Gogh right here