Van Gogh Starry Night Over the Rhone

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 colour 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 colours 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.