The Starry Night

Vincent van Gogh painted this glowing night scene in June 1889, while he was staying at an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. He had checked himself in after a rough stretch in his life, and the rolling countryside beyond his window became his subject. Interestingly, the cozy little village with its pointed church steeple was not really there. He added it from his imagination. Even the stars themselves came from memory, since he worked on the canvas during daylight hours rather than beneath an actual night sky.

The whole scene pulses with movement thanks to thick, curling brushstrokes that make the sky feel almost alive. Deep blues swirl around bursts of golden yellow, giving off a strange mix of peace and unrest at the same time. On the left, a tall dark cypress tree stretches upward like a flame. Cypresses were often planted in cemeteries, so many people read the tree as a quiet nod to death reaching toward the heavens above.

The saddest twist is that van Gogh thought this painting was a flop. He considered it a failure and sold barely anything during his lifetime, never guessing it would grow into a treasure admired by millions. Today it hangs at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where crowds gather daily around the very work its maker dismissed.