Imã Starry Night Over the Rhone by Vincent Van Gogh

Starry Night Over the Rhone by Vincent Van Gogh, oil on canvas 1888, is a landscape painting of a town and lights at night on the curving banks of the river Rhone beneath a vast canopy of shining stars that reflect in the rippling river water. In the foreground a man and woman stroll arm in arm. Van Gogh constructs the picture in a range of deep, brilliant ultramarine marines that fade to deep, dark blue-black, punctuated by the rays of twinkling stars overhead. The bright yellows of street lights and stars create a complementary color contrast to the dark blue night sky. Van Gogh painted the picture while living at the town of Arles in the south of France, a year before creating his similar but more famous Starry Night. The heightened colors and thickly applied swirls and expressive brushstrokes of impasto oil paints heralds the power of the mature, Post-Impressionist style that the artist developed in his final years. Vincent Van Gogh (1853 - 1890) was a Dutch painter of the Post-Impressionist movement known for bold, expressive drawing, swirling brushstrokes and intense, heightened colors. In early adulthood Van Gogh worked as an art dealer, teacher and pastor before taking up the full time study of drawing and painting in his late twenties. Influenced by Rembrandt, the 19th century Realists and Barbizon school, Van Gogh’s early paintings featured studies of workers and peasants in somber earth tones. Moving to France in 1886, Van Gogh met with the startling innovations of the Impressionist painters and began to apply their approach to color and subject matter, which continued into the mature style for which the artist is most renowned. Van Gogh produced many hundreds of drawings and paintings including portraits, landscapes, still life and flower paintings, and numerous self-portraits that became a dominating influence on the modern art of the 20th century and made him one of the most popular artists of all time.