Vincent Van Gogh was a prolific dutch painter from the 1880’s who’s personal turmoil served as a muse to his artwork. Born in 1853, Van Gogh’s parents, art dealers, sent the young Vincent to a multitude of schools around Europe. He reportedly detested being away from his home and would repeatedly ask to come home. His early life, as he describes it, was filled with solitude and cold.

His life was far from orderly. He bounced between careers, flunked out of schools, moved from one city to another, all the while his parents pressured him. His father went as far as to suggest he go to an asylum. With the chaos of his life, the one constant was his art. Ever since he was a young child he loved drawing and painting. His adulthood was entrenched in poverty and pain. Coffee and bread were his main source of nutrition. All the while he struggled to consistently find commission work or stay out of trouble at his arts academy.

In 1889, after a tumultuous time in France, Van Gogh suffered an acute mental breakdown leading him to mutilate his ear. He was sent to an insane asylum in Saint Remy and there he spent the last year of his life painting some of his most notable paintings. Hallucinations and delusions plagued him until his death in 1890.

While being treated in Saint Remy, Van Gogh painted his most celebrated work: The Starry Night. The painting is significant because of its representation of Van Gogh’s creativity and declining mental health. Many of his older paintings were done with earth tones and had a more realistic and grim atmosphere to them.

Skull of a Skeleton with a Burning Cigarette

It was in the late 1880s when his started to turn for the worse, did his art take on a more impressionist demeanor. The Starry Night captures this perfectly. Its bright blue contrasted with the yellow stars and the blackness of the town create a vivid image symbolizing the vibrancy of the night sky. The swirls in the painting do a brilliant job of indicating movement, but at the same time its explicit abstraction creates the sense of subjective perception as if the audience is looking through Van Gogh’s troubled mind.

Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night is one of the most noteworthy pieces of art ever created. It’s celebrated for its unusual style, its influence and its ability to capture Van Gogh’s mental state at such a fragile time.

Image Credits:

Featured Image: Van Gogh, Creative Commons

Body Image: Van Gogh, Creative Commons