Speakasso › Paintings › The Starry Night
The Starry Night
Vincent van Gogh, 1889
The sky is boiling: swirling eddies, eleven huge stars, a crescent moon in a yellow halo. Below, a village sleeps around its church spire, and at left a dark cypress shoots up like a flame. Van Gogh painted it in the asylum at Saint-Rémy in June 1889, combining the view from his window with memory and invention; the church looks more Dutch than Provençal. The artist himself thought the picture a failure. Today it is arguably the most famous painting in the world.
What is in the painting
- Swirl in the sky. Two enormous spiralling currents in the middle of the sky.
- Dark flame. At left a black-green cypress reaches from the ground to the top edge.
- Spire over rooftops. Tiny houses with yellow windows and a sharp church steeple.
Did you know? The brightest 'star' to the right of the cypress is Venus, which really did blaze over Saint-Rémy before dawn in June 1889.
About the painting
- Artist
- Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890)
- Year
- 1889
- Style
- Post-Impressionism
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Size
- 73.7 × 92.1 cm
- Where to see it
- Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York
How to describe it in Speakasso
In Speakasso you describe the painting in your own words and an AI draws it again. These words are forbidden in this round — each one costs 15 points:
A description that scores high
A dark blue sky fills the top two-thirds, churning with huge swirls. Eleven glowing balls of yellow light with halos float across it, and a thin orange crescent burns in the top right corner. On the left, a tall black-green tree shaped like a flame shoots up to the top. Below, a sleepy little town with a pointed church spire and tiny lit windows sits among blue hills. Thick swirling brushstrokes, like an oil painting.
The tricky part: The flame-shaped tree is the hard part: call it a tall black-green tongue of fire rising on the left all the way to the top.
The method behind it: what is painted first, then where things are, then colour and light, then the style. Read the full guide
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