New Study Contests“The Starry Night” Painting Date

(MENAFN- USA Art News) A new study published Thursday, October 22, in Scientific Reports challenges the long-accepted dating of Vincent van Gogh's iconic painting,“The Starry Night.” Traditionally believed to have been completed in June 1889, researchers suggest the Post-Impressionist masterpiece may have been inspired by a night sky a month later, in July 1889.

South Korean researchers Elijah Jeong-hyun Kim, Suna Kang, Jungwoo Song, and Ho Jin argue that several celestial elements depicted in the painting contradict a June 1889 observation. Their“multidisciplinary framework” incorporates star pattern and position analysis, contemporary weather models, and van Gogh's correspondence to support the July 1889 hypothesis. The report's abstract states,“Earlier astronomical readings, constrained by the conventional June dating, reached mutually exclusive conclusions, and the painting's celestial arrangement was never quantitatively tested. These findings suggest that the night sky in The Starry Night originated from observation of a specific celestial arrangement, and call for reconsidering the June dating.”

In June 1889, van Gogh was several weeks into a year-long stay at an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France. This period followed his well-known incident of severing his left ear during an argument with painter Paul Gauguin. The view from his asylum window is widely considered the inspiration for this expressionist work, which is part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.

Source: Hyperallergic

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