One of the Belgian poets, Émile Verhaeren, wrote a few beautiful lines on the circle of art during the 19th century, which says, “There is no longer any single school, there are scarcely any groups, and those few are constantly splitting. All these tendencies make me think of moving and kaleidoscopic geometric patterns, which clash at one moment only to unite at another, which now fuse and then separate and fly apart a little later, but which all nevertheless revolved with the same circle, that of the new art.” It is this “circle of the new art”, which led to the movement of Post-Impressionism, a period from about 1866 when the Impressionists had their last incomplete exhibition at which Neo-Impressionists appeared for the first time. Twenty years later, Cubism was born, and a new contemporary art followed it. During this short span, numerous artists became famous, but a lot like Van Gogh and Seurat were extremely neglected; some of them emerged after their deaths, such as Fauves Gauguin and Vincent. The year 1886, which began the movement, Post-Impressionism also marked Vincent’s arrival in Paris. It was after this that the official Salon presented its annual contingent of academic portraits, pretty nudes, historical scenes, and genre works to an appreciative public and complacent critics in May. Though there were lots of events in between all these, this was the time, when Post-Impressionism came to life, which will have the hearts of centuries ahead. One of the most touching and sentimental paintings from this time, which remained neglected at the time, is Starry Night Over the Rhône.
Starry Night Over the Rhône | Fast Knowledge
Starry Night Over the Rhône is an 1888 oil on canvas painting by Vincent van Gogh, crucial for depicting the artist’s favorite subject, Night Sky. The predecessor of The Starry Night, this painting depicts water and its reflections with two lovers on the shore and shimmering stars in the dark sky. The painting is displayed at the Musee d’Orsay, Paris.
General Information About the Painting.
1. Artist’s Statement.
“There are two things that fill my spirit with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more frequently and constantly I devote my thoughts to them: the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.”
2. Subject Matter.
The painting Starry Night Over the Rhone is followed by the night-time cafe scene, which was a sincere, emotional, and diametrically opposed statement. Immanuel Kant expressed it well,
“There are two things that fill my spirits with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more frequently and constantly I devote my thoughts to them: the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.”
Vincent painted Starry Night Over the Rhone, a little-known but far more consistent and conceived precursor of the more famous late masterpiece, The Starry Night.
In this image, the Rhône River is pictured at night, when everything is submerged underneath the sparkling tranquility of the stars. The city lights and stars together glimmer in the water with a boat on its shore. On the same shore, a couple faces the water with their backs to it. There are glittering stars and wavy reflections in the water, but the landscape could hardly satisfy Romantic tastes. There is a use of Prussian blue, ultramarine, and cobalt colors, and the city gas lights glimmer an intense orange, reflecting in the water. Vincent’s letter 499 describes a moving experience of the endless darkness that inspired this night scene. He writes,
“Once I went for a walk along the deserted shore at night. It was not cheerful, it was not sad- it was beautiful.”
3. Artist.
Vincent van Gogh painted the composition, Starry Night Over the Rhône. Vincent, who had long been sensitive to the ethical values of the works he admired, did not find any negative fragment at Durand-Ruel’s, an art dealer whose selection offended many American and French critics. Nevertheless, it is quite possible that he wasn’t immediately able to grasp the impetus of a budding experiment, which has now become a conquest of a new vision. Whatever the case, he found it more difficult to understand the more delicate art of Renoir than that of Guillaumin and Pissarro, who is considered the heir of Jean-François Millet among the Impressionists. In 1880, at the age of twenty-seven, Vincent was driven by an irresistible urge to express his visual experiences and started an uphill fight against his clumsiness. Though previously he was an employee in art galleries, he didn’t show the slightest inclination towards creativeness. When the desire to draw had at last taken hold of him, he proved himself in the beginning so touchingly awkward that even the best intentional adviser could not have discerned in his first sketches the faintest gleam of promise. He continued to work in Brussels, Hague, Nuenen, and Antwerp, even with his incredible stubbornness and ardor, until his unskilled art began to closely follow those of his eye and mind. He became an artist not because he had shown some precocious gifts or an early interest in art but because he wanted to paint and because Vincent knew that somehow with all his patience, persistence, and application, he would find a way to express himself. In the early days of his career, he wrote,
“That of which my head and heart are full must reappear in drawings or paintings.”
4. Date.
The Starry Night Over the Rhône canvas dates back to September 1888.
5. Provenance.
A little provenance of the painting is that Vincent exhibited the Starry Night Over the Rhône along with his Irises at the Salon des Independants, at which no artist can show more than two of his works. Other artists who exhibited at the same time and place are Toulouse-Lautrec, Seurat, and Signac. Vincent returned to the north to Paris or Brittany, to visit the old friends and the parts he came from, but he knew that he was not yet fit to do so. This painting was later hung in Theo’s apartment alongside The Potato Eaters and Almond Blossoms.
Ever since Vincent arrived in Arles, he was constantly preoccupied with the thought of composing a painting with “night effects.”
In April 1888, he wrote to Theo,
“I need a starry night with cypresses or maybe above a field of ripe wheat.”
Being painted on the spots of the river, which was only a minute away from the yellow house on the place Lamartine, where Vincent stayed at that time, the artwork showed the stars as the symbolic elements here.
6. Location.
Starry Night Over the Rho is on exhibition at Musee d’Orsay, Paris.
7. Technique and Medium.
The composition has the medium of oil on canvas with a Post-Impressionist style. Vincent used a spontaneous fusion of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal brushstrokes at varied places in the composition. There is a use of highly stylized effects with extensive brushwork. Using Impasto, Vincent used horizontal and vertical brushwork for the sky, a dot and lines emerging outwards for stars, and horizontal and diagonal brushwork for water and boat in a highly expressive way. The star-gazing of Van Gogh reflects all the Romantic resources he had accumulated, as he resisted the positivist attempt to see the stars as mere objects in the known world.
| Artist | Vincent van Gogh |
| Year Painted | September 1888 |
| Genre | Landscape Painting |
| Period | Post-Impressionism |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 72.5 x 92 cm |
| Price | Not on sale |
| Where is it housed? | Musee d’Orsay, Paris (on loan) |
In-Depth Description of Starry Night Over the Rhône.
About the Artist: Vincent van Gogh.
So far in my previous articles on Vincent, I tried explaining different instances of his life, which were related to his artworks, family, and career. But there is much more to know about him. Hence, today in this section, I am telling you about the love life of the artist.
In Letter 164, Vincent wrote,
“Retribution comes if one lives without a woman for too long. And I do not believe that what some people call God, others Nature is Both irrational and merciless. In a word, I came to this conclusion: Just for once I shall see if I can’t find myself a woman. And, dear God, I didn’t need to look far.”
It was nature, both merciful and rational (Van Gogh’s view of the world is characterized by the combination of rationality and humanity), that provided Van Gogh with a woman. This woman was none other, than Christine Clasina Maria Hoornik, known as Sien, and was a prostitute. She had a daughter and was expecting a second child. Vincent wrote,
“It is not the first time that I’ve been unable to resist the feeling of attraction and love towards those women in particular whom the pastors damn so vehemently, condemning and despising them from on high in their pulpits.”
For Vincent, living with a person is the greatest feeling. He writes,
“If one wakes early and is not alone, one sees a fellow human being beside one, it makes the whole world so much more of a livable place. Far more livable than the devotional books and whitewashed church walls the pastors are so in love with.”
Vincent left his parental home at Etten in 1881 after a violent family quarrel and moved to The Hague. The city was a hub of art, which meant so much to him, plus he was close to Sien. At every festival marking Christmas, Van Gogh made decisions that changed his life repeatedly. As a result of the 1881 Christmas urging, he turned in his notice at Goupil’s and returned home when trade was brisk. Later, when his life with Gauguin in Arles deteriorated, the crisis reached the point when he mutilated himself at Christmas. Coming back to his life in Hague, he attempted to re-establish his festive tranquility with Christina. He writes in Letter 213,
“A strong, powerful emotion visits a man’s spirit when he sits beside the woman he loves, with an infant child in the cradle next to him. Even if she was in hospital and I sitting beside her where she lay- it would still always be the eternal poetry of Christmas night, with the infant in the manger, as the old Dutch painters portrayed it, and Millet and Breton- with a light nevertheless in the darkness, a brightness amidst the dark night.”
Now, that you know a part of Vincent, let’s move on to the historical context of the painting, Starry Night Over the Rhône.
Historical Provenance of the Starry Night Over the Rhone.
The painting’s provenance goes back to when Vincent was living in Arles in 1888. Usually immersed in painting the open country to the lanes and back streets of the old town, Vincent lived at the Place Lamartine at this time, which was closer to the river Rhône. During this time, he majorly painted Night Paintings, which I have already explained in an article on Starry Night. At first, he painted The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles at night. He could only see the motif he was looking for from the outside wall of the cafe out over the square, the gaslight that shone in the darkness. A new artistic genre was created by him in passing: the plein-air nighttime scene.
When he painted The Night Cafe in the Place Lamartine in Arles, Vincent focussed on the theme of artificial lighting. In Letter 533, he explains this painting, while telling the reason behind his Night paintings,
“To the great delight of the cafe proprietor, the postman and those who love the night, and to my own, I have stayed up for three nights and slept during the day. It sometimes seems to me that the night is much livelier and its colors intenser, than the day. True, I shall hardly manage to earn the money I paid the proprietor with my picture, for it is one of the most jarring that I have done. It ranks with the Potato Eaters. I have attempted to express terrible human passions in reds and greens. The room is blood-red and a muted yellow, with a green billiard table in the middle, and four lemon-yellow lamps casting orange and green light. Everywhere there are conflicts and antitheses: in the extremely varied greens and reds, in the small figures of the night folk, in the empty, dismal room, in the violet and blue.”
Hence, Vincent portrayed the painting in negative terms with a wretched hopelessness of the atmosphere. In other words, Van Gogh was commenting on the eulogies being sung at that time to artificial light: Even if it meant producing unsubtle, assertive art, he wanted to demonstrate that the world that revered this new light had lost touch with all humanity.
As is typical for Vincent, he could not let this pessimism stand unchallenged by his optimistic response. Hence, after these paintings, he finally painted Starry Night Over the Rhone, which was sincere, emotional, and diametrically opposed to the night-time cafe paintings. Prompted by the genuinely moving experience of the endless darkness of a night, Vincent writes in Letter 499,
“Once I went for a walk along the deserted shore at night. It was not cheerful, it was not sad- it was beautiful.”
We will learn more about the artwork in the next section, which will determine the emotions and symbolism behind Vincent’s Starry Night Over the Rhône.
Understanding Starry Night Over the Rhône Meaning.
The painting is a contrasting response to his painting, The Night Cafe in which he interprets his own picture as ill with his love of paradox. Declaring the fact that his work deals with “terrible human passions”, in letter 534, he calls a bar,
“a place where one could ruin oneself, where one could go mad and commit crimes.”
Furthermore, he compares the artificial lights to hopelessness and considers it as unsubtle, assertive art. Now, in the painting, Starry Night Over the Rhône, he paints exactly the opposite, giving much importance to natural light and connecting it with humanity.
Furthermore, this painting shows the place that lets Vincent get carried away in its beauty. He claimed the stars were not mere objects in the known realm, as positivists attempted to see them scientifically and banally. His religious impulses once again surfaced as a result of his deep abhorrence of this attempt,
“It does me good to do something difficult. But it in no way changes the fact that I have an immense need for (should I use the word) religion; and then I go out at night into the open and paint the stars, and I always dream of such a picture with a group of lively friendly figures.”
Hence, the stars out in the open are the signature feature of Vincent’s night pictures. The innovation behind them was the result of his need to devote himself to something, which further developed his artistic methodology. He once wrote to Bernard as early as April 1888,
“Take a starry sky, for instance… I would terribly like to try and do something of that kind… But how am I to manage it if I do not decide to work at home, from imagination?”
Subject Matter.
The painting showcases a starry night on the riverside with a couple and a boat on the shore. To its distance, Vincent painted a beautiful and serene city with its light reflecting on the Rhône River. Over the waters, the city lights and stars reflect a light illuminance. Although the stars seem small, they appear to shine and have a distance between each other.
Formal Analysis of Starry Night Over the Rhône.
1. Color, Light, and Value.
The painting shows a dim light and higher contrast. There is lightness in the middle of the sky, the rest of the entire area is filled with dark hues. Over the sky, there is a light illuminance through the yellow stars and city-light reflections over the water.
2. Brushstrokes.
Vincent used a fusion of brushstrokes to paint this composition. Unlike in Starry Night, the brushwork is not rough and aggressive, instead it embraces emotional sensibility. The sky has horizontal and vertical dabs of brushwork, and water has horizontal dabs but near the shore, there are diagonal lines of brushwork which convey a sense of motion and stir in the painting.
Final Words.
Starry Night Over the Rhône is an extremely lively night painting from Vincent’s gallery, which not only shows how Vincent saw the beauty of the river, Rhône, but also portrays a connection of humanity through sensible lights. Vincent beautifully captured the entire scene through his highly stylized brushwork and subtle contrasts of colors. Of all the Impressionists, only Vincent had the capability to portray most of his emotions through any of his artwork, which The Starry Night Over the Rhone sure did!
Resources.
- Vincent Van Gogh: Artist (Great Achievers) by Peter Tyson.
- Post-Impressionism: From Van Gogh to Gauguin by John Rewald.
- Dear Theo: The Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh by Irving Stone and Jean Stone.
- Vincent van Gogh by Victoria Charles.
- Vincent Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings by Ingo F. Walther and Rainer Metzger.
- Featured Image: Starry Night Over the Rhône by Vincent van Gogh, Vincent van Gogh, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Frequently Asked Questions.
The painting Starry Night Over the Rhone is painted with oil on canvas medium in the Post-Impressionist style. Vincent created a classic night landscape of the Rhône River with symbolism embedded in it.
Starry Night Over the Rhône represents how Vincent was dissolved and carried away by the enchanting beauty of the Rhône River. It portrays the starlit sky bound with the landscape as not cheerful or sad, but beautiful.
“Starry Night Over the Rhone” was one of the only Van Gogh works to be publicly displayed before his death, as part of the 1889 Society des Independents exhibition in Paris. Further, it is sincere, emotional, and diametrically opposed to the night-time cafe paintings from Vincent’s Gallery. Lastly, by chance, a newspaper report briefly mentions Vincent working on this painting, which was a rare event.
Starry Night Over the Rhône is the precursor of the famous painting, The Starry Night. While, Starry Night Over the Rhône captures the beauty of the Rhône River, which is comforting, The Starry Night shows the deteriorated mental state of Vincent. Hence, the brushwork of both artworks differs.
Starry Night Over the Rhone is a Landscape art with symbolism embedded in it. The painting captured the mesmerizing and magical starlit sky while peeking through the darkness of night, enlightened by the stars and city lights.
The painting, Starry Night Over the Rhône portrays the course of beauty by capturing the natural light of stars on a dark night. As positivists attempted to see the stars scientifically and banally, Vincent argued that the stars were not mere objects in the known realm, which he also showed in this painting. Due to his abhorrence of this attempt, he once again rediscovered his religious impulses. Finally, he connected this natural form of light with humanity.
Starry Night Over the Rhône is on exhibition at Musee d’Orsay, Paris.
The painting shows a variety of dark colors, ranging from Prussian blue, ultramarine, and cobalt to a bright color sparkling yellow for stars and city light. There is a subtle contrast in the painting through colors.
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