Van Gogh’s night

Originally published 10 October 1988

In [a 1988] issue of Sky & Tele­scope mag­a­zine, astronomers Don­ald Olson and Rus­sell Doesch­er turn their atten­tion from the real sky to a sky paint­ed by the 19th cen­tu­ry Dutch artist Vin­cent van Gogh. The paint­ing, Road with Cypress and Star, shows three celes­tial objects — a cres­cent moon, a bright star, and a less bright star near the hori­zon. The astronomers asked them­selves: Is the sky in the paint­ing the prod­uct of the artist’s imag­i­na­tion, or was it inspired by an actu­al con­fig­u­ra­tion of celes­tial objects?

Art schol­ars agree that Road with Cypress and Star was paint­ed at Saint-Rémy, in south­ern France, near the end of Van Gogh’s year­long stay at an asy­lum in that town. The artist left Saint-Rémy on May 16, 1890 for Auvers, near Paris, where he com­mit­ted sui­cide two months later.

Using a com­put­er to recon­struct celes­tial posi­tions, Olson and Doesch­er worked back­wards from the date of Van Gogh’s depar­ture from Saint-Rémy, look­ing for a like­ly arrange­ment of stars and moon.

A cres­cent moon occurred on April 19. The bril­liant evening star Venus was near the moon on that date, and lit­tle Mer­cury near the hori­zon. The arrange­ment of the three objects in the sky was strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar to the objects in the paint­ing — except that the order of the objects is reversed left-to-right, and the moon’s cres­cent is tipped in a way that nev­er hap­pens in the real sky. Despite the dif­fer­ences, the astronomers are con­vinced that the April 19, 1890 con­junc­tion of Mer­cury, Venus, and moon was the inspi­ra­tion for Van Gogh’s painting.

Scientific realism

Har­vard astronomer Charles Whit­ney and UCLA art his­to­ri­an Albert Boime have pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered oth­er of Van Gogh’s paint­ings from the astro­nom­i­cal point of view, espe­cial­ly Star­ry Night over the Rhône and The Star­ry Night. Whit­ney and Boime used plan­e­tar­i­ums to recon­struct past skies, and trav­eled to France to observe the sky from the places where Van Gogh expe­ri­enced it. They found sev­er­al ele­ments of sci­en­tif­ic real­ism in the paintings.

In Star­ry Night over the Rhône the Big Dip­per is eas­i­ly rec­og­nized, although the artist has placed the Dip­per, a north­ern con­stel­la­tion, in a view to the south­west. Boime pur­ports to find Venus and the con­stel­la­tion Aires among the stars of The Star­ry Night. In the spi­ral­ing swirls of The Star­ry Night both Whit­ney and Boime see the influ­ence of Lord Rosse’s 1845 draw­ing of the spi­ral galaxy M51, known as the Whirlpool galaxy. They guess that Van Gogh may have seen a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Lord Rosse’s sketch in the works of the French astro­nom­i­cal pop­u­lar­iz­er Camille Flammarion.

As Boime makes clear, Van Gogh was keen­ly inter­est­ed in astron­o­my, car­tog­ra­phy, and sci­ence in gen­er­al. He was also an exact observ­er of the night. In a let­ter to his sis­ter, Van Gogh says that “cer­tain stars are cit­ron-yel­low, oth­ers have a pink glow, or a green, blue and for­get-me-not bril­liance.” Stars do indeed exhib­it these col­ors, but only to a care­ful observ­er. On this and oth­er evi­dence, Whit­ney con­cludes that Van Gogh had excel­lent night vision.

Nev­er­the­less, Van Gogh’s skies are unlike any I have seen. His stars are whirling vor­tices of col­or, not cold points of dis­tant light. Blue-black night yields in the paint­ings to tor­rents of yel­low and green. Moons burn with the pos­i­tive vital­i­ty of suns. Space seethes with the ener­gy of flame.

Many peo­ple sup­pose that Van Gogh’s ver­tig­i­nous paint­ings of the night are a prod­uct of his mad­ness. Art his­to­ri­an Ronald Pick­vane rejects this inter­pre­ta­tion: “Between his break­downs at the asy­lum [Van Gogh] had long peri­ods of absolute lucid­i­ty, when he was com­plete­ly mas­ter of him­self and his art. That his mind was informed and imag­i­na­tive, inter­pre­tive and high­ly ana­lyt­i­cal can be seen in the way he assessed his own work.”

Provocative images

By find­ing ele­ments of astro­nom­i­cal real­ism in Van Gogh’s paint­ings, Olson, Doesch­er, Whit­ney, and Boime con­firm that these provoca­tive visions of the night are not the prod­ucts of mad­ness. But nei­ther are they lit­er­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the sky. They rep­re­sent (in Pick­vane’s words) “an exalt­ed expe­ri­ence of reality.”

From the barred win­dow of his room at the asy­lum Van Gogh had an unob­struct­ed view of the night sky. His insom­nia gave him ample oppor­tu­ni­ty to observe the stars. What he put onto can­vas was more than what he saw, and more than what a com­put­er or plan­e­tar­i­um can recon­struct. In one of his let­ters he wrote: “I should be des­per­ate if my fig­ures were correct…my great long­ing is to make these incor­rect­ness­es, these devi­a­tions, remod­el­lings, changes of real­i­ty that they may become, yes, untruth if you like — but more true than lit­er­al truth.”

The painter Georges Braque said: “Art is meant to dis­turb. Sci­ence reas­sures.” The col­or-splashed, star­ry vor­tices of Van Gogh’s night­time paint­ings cer­tain­ly dis­turb. They dis­turb because they evoke some­thing that in our less exalt­ed way we rec­og­nize as truer than lit­er­al truth. The whirl­wind stars of The Star­ry Night draw us up into a beau­ti­ful, ter­ri­fy­ing, uncer­tain uni­verse — a uni­verse in which the indi­vid­ual must some­times strug­gle to find secu­ri­ty and mean­ing. Know­ing that these wild­ly tur­bu­lent images con­tain an ele­ment of sci­en­tif­ic real­ism is only mild­ly reassuring.