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Collection: Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh, 1889

Vincent van Gogh 
(March 30, 1853 - July 29, 1890)

The Starry Night is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh, painted in June 1889. It depicts the view from the east-facing window of his asylum room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, just before sunrise, with the addition of an imaginary village. It has been in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City since 1941, acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest. Widely regarded as Van Gogh's magnum opus, The Starry Night is one of the most recognizable paintings in Western art.

In the aftermath of his December 23rd breakdown of 1888 that resulted in the self-mutilation of his left ear, Van Gogh finally relented to family pressure and admitted himself to the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole lunatic asylum on the 8th of May, the following year. Housed in a former monastery, Saint-Paul-de-Mausole catered to the wealthy and was less than half full when Van Gogh arrived, allowing him to occupy not only a second-story bedroom but also a ground-floor room for use as a painting studio.

During the year Van Gogh stayed at the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, the prolific output of paintings he had begun in Arles continued. During this period, he produced some of the best-known works of his career, including the Irises from May 1889, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Blue Self-Portrait from September 1889, in the Musée d'Orsay. The Starry Night was painted mid-June and by around June 18th, he wrote to his brother Theo to say he had a new study of a starry sky.