The Starry Night

1889

Oil on canvas, 73.7 × 92.1 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York

A village sleeps under a sky of swirling stars beside a towering cypress. It began with the view from his asylum window but goes far beyond it.

The village was put together from other views, and the cypress was moved closer. The motif is reshaped to carry feeling rather than to record the scene.
Look for the moon blazing at right and Venus glowing at center left.
The scene is nocturnal, but he worked on it across several sessions by day.
He painted it in mid-June, a month or so after he entered the asylum.
MoMA acquired it by exchange through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest.

He stayed at the asylum for a full year, 1889–90, hoping treatment would ease his mental illness. That single year produced hundreds of works.