44 Fun Facts About The Starry Night

The dark tree at the left of The Starry Night is often described as shaped like what?

A flame: the real trees stood far off beyond the field wall, but he pulled one up close, where it towers over the whole scene.

In which city has The Starry Night hung since 1941?

New York's Museum of Modern Art acquired it in 1941 through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest, and it has since become one of the most recognised paintings in Western art.

The church steeple in The Starry Night looks more like those of which country than those of France?

The Netherlands, where he grew up as a pastor's son: the tall spire matches Dutch churches better than any he could see near the asylum.

How did Van Gogh come to enter the asylum in May 1889?

He admitted himself: fearing a fresh attack, Van Gogh chose to go, and he stayed for a full year, painting whenever his health allowed.

Van Gogh told Theo he looked out from his asylum bedroom through what?

Iron bars, he wrote, yet what he dwelt on lay beyond them: an enclosed field, and each morning the sun rising over it in its glory.

With more than 30 rooms standing empty, what did the asylum give Van Gogh besides his bedroom in 1889?

A studio: the asylum was less than half full, so a spare ground-floor room became his workroom, and The Starry Night was made there.

Van Gogh could not paint in his bedroom, where he saw the night sky, so when did he paint The Starry Night?

During the day: a painter who preferred working from what lay in front of him had to make his night sky in daylight, away from the window that showed it.

What kind of paint did Van Gogh use for The Starry Night?

Oil paints, laid on so thickly that the strokes stand up from the canvas and set the whole sky in motion.

The brightest 'star' in The Starry Night, just right of the tall tree, is really which planet?

Venus: he told Theo he had watched the morning star looking very big before sunrise, and astronomers confirm it shone there that spring.

Which part of The Starry Night lay out of sight of Van Gogh's asylum window?

The village was added from imagination: his window looked over a walled field to the hills, with no houses or church in sight.

How did Van Gogh describe The Starry Night in a letter to Émile Bernard in late 1889?

A failure, he told Bernard: he felt he had once again let himself paint stars that were too big, and said he had had enough of that.

A year before The Starry Night, Van Gogh told his sister the night seemed richer in what than the day?

Colour: he found the night more alive and more richly coloured than the day, the conviction behind the deep blues and glowing yellows he painted in 1889.

Which painter had lived with Van Gogh in Arles and argued for painting from imagination?

Paul Gauguin stayed with him in Arles in late 1888 and worked from memory, and Van Gogh later blamed that pull toward abstraction for The Starry Night's oversized stars.

How did Theo van Gogh react when The Starry Night reached him in Paris?

He had doubts about it: Theo wrote back that he understood the moonlit scene but felt the search for style took away the real sentiment of things.

Which 1888 Arles painting first set a patch of starry sky above a street scene?

Café Terrace at Night was painted on the spot in the dark, work he said he enormously enjoyed; Starry Night Over the Rhône followed the same month.

Which Paris museum holds Starry Night Over the Rhône, painted in Arles in 1888?

Musée d'Orsay holds the canvas today; Theo showed it at the 1889 Salon des Indépendants in Paris while his brother was in the asylum.

The Starry Night was painted in which region of France, where Van Gogh had moved in 1888?

Provence delighted him with its bright light and strong colours when he arrived in Arles in 1888, and he stayed in the region for just over two years.

Soon after reaching Arles, Van Gogh wrote that he needed 'a starry night with' what?

Cypresses still preoccupied him more than a year later at the asylum, where that June he gave the trees two canvases of their own.

Van Gogh wrote that dying takes us to a star as what takes us to Tarascon or Rouen?

A train, he wrote in 1888: the stars made him dream the way the black dots for towns on a map did, each one a place you might somehow travel to.

LEGO's 2022 Starry Night set, made with MoMA, began as a design by whom?

A fan in Hong Kong: Truman Cheng, a PhD student, put his brick version on LEGO's ideas platform, where it drew the 10,000 supporters a design needs to be reviewed.

The whirling forms in the sky of The Starry Night match published astronomical drawings of what?

Nebulae: astronomy books of his day printed drawings of spiral ones seen through telescopes, which astronomers later recognised as whole galaxies beyond our own.

The tall dark tree in The Starry Night belongs to a kind long linked with what in Mediterranean culture?

Death: such trees were planted in graveyards as symbols of mourning, and the one here has been read as a bridge between the earth and the sky.

The Starry Night was sent to Theo van Gogh in Paris, where he worked as what?

An art dealer: Theo worked for a Paris gallery firm, and his steady financial support let his brother devote himself entirely to painting.

Painting rain from the asylum window behind The Starry Night, Van Gogh borrowed his slanting strokes from which art?

Japanese prints: two years earlier in Paris he had copied a Hiroshige print of a bridge in a downpour, and he drew the rain over the asylum field with slanting lines of the same kind.

When Van Gogh and his brother Theo died within months of each other, who took charge of The Starry Night?

His sister-in-law, Jo, inherited hundreds of unsold canvases in 1891 and spent decades lending, selling and promoting them until his name was made.

The window behind The Starry Night overlooked a walled field of what crop, painted by Van Gogh again and again?

Wheat: he told Theo he could see a square of it in an enclosure, and he painted the field under bright summer sun and under dark storm clouds.

What killed Van Gogh in July 1890, a year after he painted The Starry Night?

A gunshot wound to the chest: he died two days later in his room at a small inn, with his brother Theo at his bedside.

Paul Rosenberg, who sold The Starry Night to MoMA, had fled what?

Occupied France: Rosenberg, a Jewish dealer in Paris, escaped to New York in 1940, and the Nazis seized works from the collection he had to leave behind.

In Starry Night Over the Rhône, what casts the long golden reflections across the water?

Gas street lamps in Arles: he set their harsh orange-gold glare against the pale sparkle of the stars above.

What did Lillie Bliss, whose bequest secured The Starry Night, do for MoMA in 1929?

Helped to found it: Bliss was one of three women who set up the museum, and works from her bequest were later exchanged for The Starry Night.

Van Gogh, a pastor's son, told Theo that a 'tremendous need' for what sent him out at night to paint the stars?

Religion, he wrote in 1888, hesitating over the word: 'so I go outside at night to paint the stars', the urge behind his star-filled canvases.

What is the term for paint laid on so thickly that the brushstrokes stand out, as in The Starry Night?

Impasto leaves raised ridges that catch the light, and Van Gogh used it constantly, for expression as much as for looks.

Van Gogh's daylight companion piece to The Starry Night shows a grove of which trees below the hills?

Olive trees, painted the same June under a twisting white cloud; he grouped both canvases as exaggerations, with lines contorted like old woodcuts.

What is the title of Don McLean's 1971 tribute song to Van Gogh that opens by echoing The Starry Night?

Vincent was written in 1970 after McLean read a biography of the painter, with a print of The Starry Night in front of him.

Van Gogh painted The Starry Night near the end of a career that lasted about how long?

About 10 years, yet he left more than 800 paintings, and he was still working at a feverish pace in the final weeks of his life.

Which pigment, once ground from lapis lazuli, gives The Starry Night the deep blue around its stars?

Ultramarine was once among the costliest pigments of all, but chemists made a synthetic version in the 1820s, and that cheaper kind is what paint analysis found around the stars.

Which star pattern did Van Gogh paint above the river in Starry Night Over the Rhône?

The Big Dipper: he painted the canvas outdoors on the riverbank and stressed to Theo that this starry sky was really painted at night.

Indian yellow, found in the moon of The Starry Night, was said to be made from the urine of which animals?

Cows fed only on mango leaves, it was said: the urine was collected and dried into balls of raw pigment.

Which doctor, an amateur painter, cared for Van Gogh in his last weeks and sat for his portrait?

Paul Gachet struck Van Gogh at first as at least as ill as he was, yet the two quickly became friends.

Van Gogh wrote that the tall dark trees of the south were as beautiful in line as which ancient monument?

An Egyptian obelisk, he told Theo in June 1889, days after The Starry Night; he was amazed that nobody had yet painted the trees as he saw them.

Where, near Paris, did Van Gogh spend his final months after leaving the asylum in May 1890?

Auvers-sur-Oise brought him closer to Theo in Paris; he died there on 29 July 1890 and lies buried in its cemetery.

Van Gogh painted The Starry Night in an asylum at which small town near Arles?

Saint-Rémy kept him for a year, from May 1889 to May 1890, and despite repeated attacks he finished about 150 paintings there.

Long before The Starry Night, Van Gogh had tried which calling among Belgian coal miners?

Missionary work in the Borinage ended when church authorities dismissed him after he gave away his belongings, and by 1880 he had turned to art instead.

Which painting did Van Gogh make at the asylum in 1890 to celebrate the birth of his nephew?

Almond Blossom was painted for the bedroom of Theo's newborn son, who had been named after him; the flowering branches stood for new life.