The Starry Night

The story of The Starry Night

The sky is moving. Eleven stars and a crescent moon burn inside rings of light, two great spirals roll through the middle, and a cypress rises from the bottom like a black flame while a small village sleeps under a church spire that Van Gogh invented. He painted it in June 1889 from the window of the asylum at Saint-Rémy, working from memory during the day because he was not allowed to paint in his room at night. It has been at the Museum of Modern Art in New York since 1941. He did not think much of it. It is now the painting people mean when they say his name.

On a wall, The Starry Night is deep blue with gold in it, and it changes a room's mood the moment it goes up. The dominant colors are cobalt and ultramarine with yellow stars, a green-black cypress, and the small warm windows of the village. It suits a bedroom above all, and also a living room, a study, a child's room, or a hallway, and it fits nearly any interior from farmhouse to modern as long as there is a wall that can carry blue. We offer it up to the Extra Large at 45.4 × 36 in, which is larger than the original and turns a wall into weather. The Large at 30.3 × 24 in is close to the real size and the honest choice; the Medium at 20.2 × 16 in is right above a nightstand or a desk.

Starry Night Over the Rhône is the calmer night sky he painted the year before, and Café Terrace at Night is his first starry sky of all. Wheatfield with Crows is the same brush under daylight, a year later. More from Vincent van Gogh.

Printed in our studio from a public-domain photograph of the MoMA canvas, keeping the thick, ridged brushwork visible rather than smoothing it.