Starry Night - Vincent Van Gogh

Starry Night(created after the painting), Reed Pen and Pencil, 18.5 x 25.5 inches, Vincent Van Gogh, 1889, Museum of Architecture (?), Moscow, Russia

Starry Night, Oil on Canvas, 29x36.25 inches, Vincent Van Gogh, 1889, MoMa

Letter from Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo Van Gogh (excerpt)

June 17 or 18, 1889

...At last I have a landscape with olive trees and also a new study of a starry sky. Though I have not seen either Gauguin's or Bernard's last canvases, I am pretty well convinced that these two studies I've spoken of are parallel in feeling.

When you have looked at these two studies for some time, and that of the ivy as well, it will perhaps give you some idea, better than words could, of the things that Gauguin and Bernard and I sometimes used to talk about, and which we've thought about a good deal; it is not a return to the romantic or to religious ideas, no. Nevertheless, by going the way of Delacroix, more than is apparent, by colour and a more spontaneous drawing than delusive precision, one could express the purer nature of a countryside compared with the suburbs and cabarets of Paris... - source: Vincent van Gogh. Letter to Theo van Gogh. Written 17 or 18 June 1889 in Saint-Rémy. Translated by Mrs. Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, edited by Robert Harrison, number 595.

When he wrote this letter, Vincent Van Gogh was 36 years old. He died July 29, 1890.

Link Full Text

Link Starry Night, Museum of Modern Art, NYC