Scientists doubling as art detectives have traced Vincent van Gogh’s painting “The Starry Night” to a celestial scene that suggests a new date for one of the world’s most famous paintings. Their findings indicate that rather than being a product of van Gogh’s imagination, “The Starry Night” may have been inspired by what he saw as he gazed heavenward from his French asylum 137 years ago. A South Korean team reported Thursday that after years of forensic astronomy and research into the Dutch artist, they have matched his masterpiece to a predawn sky over France’s Saint-Remy de Provence right around July 22, 1889.
That’s a month later than the long-accepted time frame for the postimpressionist painting depicting a crescent moon and Venus surrounded by a sky of swirling stars with a village nestled below and cypress trees looming on one side. Read moreClimate activists target art: Van Gogh’s masterpiece 'Sunflowers' defaced Art historians have long dated the painting to June 1889, soon after Van Gogh checked into the asylum. He’d cut off his left ear several months earlier during an argument with painter Paul Gauguin.
A team led by Elijah Jeong-hyun Kim, the CEO of a Seoul telescope maker, is now disputing that date in a study appearing in the journal Scientific Reports. The sky that is most similar to the painting occurred around July 22, 1889, said Kim, who is also a doctoral candidate at Kyung Hee University. He noted that the few days before and after could have inspired van Gogh as well.
Something always changes. I believe Vincent noticed those changes and put them into the painting,” Kim said in an email. He added: “I am confident that July 22 is the better date.
I will bet on this date.” The latest study addresses “a real puzzle” that in mid-June 1889, the moon was not the thin crescent painted by van Gogh, said Jose Luis Aragon at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He has studied “The Starry Night” as a physicist, but did not take part in the new research. Long fascinated by van Gogh’s art, Kim traveled to France in 2019, the first time in mid-June and the second around July 22.
He found brilliant stars rising in July’s predawn sky, unlike June. Kim and his team discovered through further celestial sleuthing that around July 22, 1889, the shape of the moon before dawn appeared like the one in the painting, with the Hyades star cluster in the constellation Taurus rising in the east alongside Venus. The sky should have been clear enough for van Gogh to see all this, based on their weather analyses.
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