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142-652: The Starry Night is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh , painted in June 1889. It depicts the view from the east-facing window of his asylum room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence , just before sunrise, with the addition of an imaginary village. It has been in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City since 1941, acquired through

284-596: A dust ring-cloud , with a suspected origin either from Venus–trailing asteroids, interplanetary dust migrating in waves, or the remains of the Solar System's original circumstellar disc that formed the planetary system . Earth and Venus have a near orbital resonance of 13:8 (Earth orbits eight times for every 13 orbits of Venus). Therefore, they approach each other and reach inferior conjunction in synodic periods of 584 days, on average. The path that Venus makes in relation to Earth viewed geocentrically draws

426-457: A pentagram over five synodic periods, shifting every period by 144°. This pentagram of Venus is sometimes referred to as the petals of Venus due to the path's visual similarity to a flower. When Venus lies between Earth and the Sun in inferior conjunction, it makes the closest approach to Earth of any planet at an average distance of 41 million km (25 million mi). Because of

568-464: A supercritical state at Venus's surface. Internally, Venus has a core ,  mantle , and  crust . Venus lacks an internal dynamo, and its weakly induced magnetosphere is caused by atmospheric interactions with the solar wind . Internal heat escapes through active volcanism , resulting in resurfacing instead of plate tectonics . Venus is one of two planets in the Solar System ,

710-762: A "night study." Of this list of paintings, he wrote, "All in all the only things I consider a little good in it are the Wheatfield, the Mountain, the Orchard, the Olive trees with the blue hills and the Portrait and the Entrance to the quarry, and the rest says nothing to me"; "the rest" would include The Starry Night . When he decided to hold back three paintings from this batch to save money on postage, The Starry Night

852-719: A "state of heightened reality," with all the other elements of the painting in place, Van Gogh threw himself into the painting of the stars, producing, they write, "a night sky unlike any other the world had ever seen with ordinary eyes." The painting echoes his thoughts and the state of mind he was in. Despite the darkness there is always hope at the end of the tunnel. After having initially held it back, Van Gogh sent The Starry Night to Theo in Paris on 28 September 1889, along with nine or ten other paintings. Theo died less than six months after Vincent, in January 1891. Theo's widow Jo became

994-474: A "visionary painting" that "was conceived in a state of great agitation." He writes of the "hallucinatory character of the painting and its violently expressive form," although he takes pains to note that the painting was not executed during one of Van Gogh's incapacitating breakdowns. Loevgren compares Van Gogh's "religiously inclined longing for the beyond" to the poetry of Walt Whitman . He calls The Starry Night "an infinitely expressive picture which symbolizes

1136-451: A 4" telescope. Although naked eye visibility of Venus's phases is disputed, records exist of observations of its crescent. When Venus is sufficiently bright with enough angular distance from the sun, it is easily observed in a clear daytime sky with the naked eye, though most people do not know to look for it. Astronomer Edmund Halley calculated its maximum naked eye brightness in 1716, when many Londoners were alarmed by its appearance in

1278-414: A Venusian year (243 versus 224.7 Earth days). Slowed by its strong atmospheric current the length of the day also fluctuates by up to 20 minutes. Venus's equator rotates at 6.52 km/h (4.05 mph), whereas Earth's rotates at 1,674.4 km/h (1,040.4 mph). Venus's rotation period measured with Magellan spacecraft data over a 500-day period is smaller than the rotation period measured during

1420-459: A change that would have occurred over the course of billions of years. The rotation period of Venus may represent an equilibrium state between tidal locking to the Sun's gravitation, which tends to slow rotation, and an atmospheric tide created by solar heating of the thick Venusian atmosphere. The 584-day average interval between successive close approaches to Earth is almost exactly equal to 5   Venusian solar days (5.001444 to be precise), but

1562-526: A deeper meaning of "Post-Impressionism" in terms of fine art and traditional art applications. The Advent of Modernism: Post-impressionism and North American Art, 1900-1918 by Peter Morrin, Judith Zilczer, and William C. Agee , the catalogue for an exhibition at the High Museum of Art , Atlanta in 1986, gave a major overview of Post-Impressionism in North America. Canadian Post-Impressionism

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1704-574: A depression. These features are volcanic in origin. Most Venusian surface features are named after historical and mythological women. Exceptions are Maxwell Montes, named after James Clerk Maxwell , and highland regions Alpha Regio , Beta Regio , and Ovda Regio . The last three features were named before the current system was adopted by the International Astronomical Union , the body which oversees planetary nomenclature . The longitude of physical features on Venus

1846-467: A dynamo at its core. A dynamo requires three things: a conducting liquid, rotation, and convection . The core is thought to be electrically conductive and, although its rotation is often thought to be too slow, simulations show it is adequate to produce a dynamo. This implies that the dynamo is missing because of a lack of convection in Venus's core. On Earth, convection occurs in the liquid outer layer of

1988-418: A landscape on the reverse (F1541r) was also a study for the painting. Despite the large number of letters Van Gogh wrote, he said very little about The Starry Night . After reporting that he had painted a starry sky in June, Van Gogh next mentioned the painting in a letter to Theo on or about 20 September 1889, when he included it in a list of paintings he was sending to his brother in Paris, referring to it as

2130-669: A meticulously scientific approach to colour and composition. The term was used in 1906, and again in 1910 by Roger Fry in the title of an exhibition of modern French painters: Manet and the Post-Impressionists , organized by Fry for the Grafton Galleries in London. Three weeks before Fry's show, art critic Frank Rutter had put the term Post-Impressionist in print in Art News of 15 October 1910, during

2272-449: A more massive primary atmosphere from solar nebula have been proposed to explain the enrichment. However, the atmosphere is depleted of radiogenic argon, a proxy for mantle degassing, suggesting an early shutdown of major magmatism. Studies have suggested that billions of years ago, Venus's atmosphere could have been much more like the one surrounding the early Earth, and that there may have been substantial quantities of liquid water on

2414-465: A purer Impressionism in the last decade of his life. Vincent van Gogh often used vibrant colour and conspicuous brushstrokes to convey his feelings and his state of mind. Although they often exhibited together, Post-Impressionist artists were not in agreement concerning a cohesive movement. Yet, the abstract concerns of harmony and structural arrangement, in the work of all these artists, took precedence over naturalism . Artists such as Seurat adopted

2556-403: A reading of the crescent moon as incorporating elements of the Sun. He says it is merely a crescent moon, which, he writes, also had symbolic meaning for Van Gogh, representing "consolation." It is in light of such symbolist interpretations of The Starry Night that art historian Albert Boime presents his study of the painting. As noted above, Boime has proven that the painting depicts not only

2698-521: A recollection of Van Gogh's Dutch homeland, or based on a sketch he made of the town of Saint-Rémy. In either case, it is an imaginary component of the picture, not visible from the window of the asylum bedroom. Cypress trees have long been associated with death in European culture , though the question of whether Van Gogh intended for them to have such a symbolic meaning in The Starry Night

2840-593: A review of the Salon d'Automne , where he described Othon Friesz as a "post-impressionist leader"; there was also an advert in the journal for the show The Post-Impressionists of France . Most of the artists in Fry's exhibition were younger than the Impressionists. Fry later explained: "For purposes of convenience, it was necessary to give these artists a name, and I chose, as being the vaguest and most non-committal,

2982-502: A star." Although at this point in his life Van Gogh was disillusioned by religion, he appears not to have lost his belief in an afterlife. He voiced this ambivalence in a letter to Theo after having painted Starry Night Over the Rhône , confessing to a "tremendous need for, shall I say the word—for religion—so I go outside at night to paint the stars." He wrote about existing in another dimension after death and associated this dimension with

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3124-419: A starry night with cypresses or—perhaps above a field of ripe wheat; there are some really beautiful nights here." That same week, he wrote to Bernard, "A starry sky is something I should like to try to do, just as in the daytime I am going to try to paint a green meadow spangled with dandelions." He compared the stars to dots on a map and mused that, as one takes a train to travel on Earth, "we take death to reach

3266-513: Is 81.5% of Earth's, making it the third-smallest planet in the Solar System . Conditions on the Venusian surface differ radically from those on Earth because its dense atmosphere is 96.5% carbon dioxide, with most of the remaining 3.5% being nitrogen . The surface pressure is 9.3 megapascals (93 bars ), and the average surface temperature is 737 K (464 °C; 867 °F), above the critical points of both major constituents and making

3408-641: Is an offshoot of Post-Impressionism. In 1913, the Art Association of Montreal's Spring show included the work of Randolph Hewton , A. Y. Jackson and John Lyman : it was reviewed with sharp criticism by the Montreal Daily Witness and the Montreal Daily Star . Post-Impressionism was extended to include a painting by Lyman, who had studied with Matisse . Lyman wrote in defence of the term and defined it. He referred to

3550-529: Is called Ishtar Terra after Ishtar , the Babylonian goddess of love, and is about the size of Australia. Maxwell Montes , the highest mountain on Venus, lies on Ishtar Terra. Its peak is 11 km (7 mi) above the Venusian average surface elevation. The southern continent is called Aphrodite Terra , after the Greek mythological goddess of love, and is the larger of the two highland regions at roughly

3692-405: Is currently volcanically active, specifically the detection of olivine , a volcanic product that would weather quickly on the planet's surface. This massive volcanic activity is fuelled by a superheated interior, which models say could be explained by energetic collisions from when the planet was young. Impacts would have had significantly higher velocity than on Earth, both because Venus's orbit

3834-466: Is enough for you to understand that I would long to see things of yours again, like the painting of yours that Gauguin has, those Breton women walking in a meadow, the arrangement of which is so beautiful, the colour so naively distinguished. Ah, you're exchanging that for something—must one say the word—something artificial—something affected." While stopping short of calling the painting a hallucinatory vision, Naifeh and Smith discuss The Starry Night in

3976-487: Is expressed relative to its prime meridian . The original prime meridian passed through the radar-bright spot at the centre of the oval feature Eve, located south of Alpha Regio. After the Venera missions were completed, the prime meridian was redefined to pass through the central peak in the crater Ariadne on Sedna Planitia . The stratigraphically oldest tessera terrains have consistently lower thermal emissivity than

4118-636: Is far from certain. Studies reported on 26 October 2023 suggest for the first time that Venus may have had plate tectonics during ancient times and, as a result, may have had a more habitable environment , possibly one capable of sustaining life . Venus has gained interest as a case for research into the development of Earth-like planets and their habitability . Much of the Venusian surface appears to have been shaped by volcanic activity. Venus has several times as many volcanoes as Earth, and it has 167 large volcanoes that are over 100 km (60 mi) across. The only volcanic complex of this size on Earth

4260-576: Is faster due to its closer proximity to the Sun and because objects would require higher orbital eccentricities to collide with the planet. In 2008 and 2009, the first direct evidence for ongoing volcanism was observed by Venus Express , in the form of four transient localized infrared hot spots within the rift zone Ganis Chasma , near the shield volcano Maat Mons . Three of the spots were observed in more than one successive orbit. These spots are thought to represent lava freshly released by volcanic eruptions. The actual temperatures are not known, because

4402-462: Is formed by sulphur dioxide and water through a chemical reaction resulting in sulfuric acid hydrate. Additionally, the clouds consist of approximately 1% ferric chloride . Other possible constituents of the cloud particles are ferric sulfate , aluminium chloride and phosphoric anhydride . Clouds at different levels have different compositions and particle size distributions. These clouds reflect, similar to thick cloud cover on Earth, about 70% of

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4544-456: Is induced by an interaction between the ionosphere and the solar wind , rather than by an internal dynamo as in the Earth's core . Venus's small induced magnetosphere provides negligible protection to the atmosphere against solar and cosmic radiation . The lack of an intrinsic magnetic field on Venus was surprising, given that it is similar to Earth in size and was expected to contain

4686-404: Is most likely at least partially liquid because the two planets have been cooling at about the same rate, although a completely solid core cannot be ruled out. The slightly smaller size of Venus means pressures are 24% lower in its deep interior than Earth's. The predicted values for the moment of inertia based on planetary models suggest a core radius of 2,900–3,450 km. This is in line with

4828-432: Is not known with certainty, but speculation has ranged from elemental tellurium to lead sulfide ( galena ). Although Venus has no seasons, in 2019 astronomers identified a cyclical variation in sunlight absorption by the atmosphere, possibly caused by opaque, absorbing particles suspended in the upper clouds. The variation causes observed changes in the speed of Venus's zonal winds and appears to rise and fall in time with

4970-406: Is speculation on the possibility that life exists in the upper cloud layers of Venus, 50 km (30 mi) up from the surface, where the atmospheric conditions are the most Earth-like in the Solar System, with temperatures ranging between 303 and 353 K (30 and 80 °C; 86 and 176 °F), and the pressure and radiation being about the same as at Earth's surface, but with acidic clouds and

5112-420: Is that the absence of a late, large impact on Venus ( contra the Earth's "Moon-forming" impact) left the core of Venus stratified from the core's incremental formation, and without the forces to initiate/sustain convection, and thus a "geodynamo". The weak magnetosphere around Venus means that the solar wind is interacting directly with its outer atmosphere. Here, ions of hydrogen and oxygen are being created by

5254-465: Is the Big Island of Hawaii. More than 85,000 volcanoes on Venus were identified and mapped. This is not because Venus is more volcanically active than Earth, but because its crust is older and is not subject to the same erosion process. Earth's oceanic crust is continually recycled by subduction at the boundaries of tectonic plates, and has an average age of about 100 million years, whereas

5396-485: Is the third brightest object in Earth's sky after the Moon and the Sun. In 1961, Venus became the target of the first interplanetary flight, Venera 1 , followed by many essential interplanetary firsts , such as the first soft landing on another planet by Venera 7 in 1970. These probes demonstrated the extreme surface conditions, an insight that has informed predictions about global warming on Earth. This finding ended

5538-537: Is the diagonal line coming in from the right depicting the low rolling hills of the Alpilles mountains. In fifteen of the twenty-one versions, cypress trees are visible beyond the far wall enclosing the wheat field. Van Gogh exaggerated their size in six of these paintings, most notably in F717 Wheat Field with Cypresses and The Starry Night , bringing the trees closer to the picture plane . One of

5680-504: Is the only nocturne in the series of views from his bedroom window. In early June, Vincent wrote to Theo, "This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big". Researchers have determined that Venus (sometimes referred to as the "morning star") was indeed visible at dawn in Provence in the spring of 1889, and was at that time nearly as bright as possible. So

5822-535: Is the second planet from the Sun . It is a terrestrial planet and is the closest in mass and size to its orbital neighbour Earth . Venus has by far the densest atmosphere of the terrestrial planets, composed mostly of carbon dioxide with a thick, global sulfuric acid cloud cover. At the surface it has a mean temperature of 737 K (464 °C; 867 °F) and a pressure 92 times that of Earth's at sea level. These extreme conditions compress carbon dioxide into

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5964-467: Is the subject of an open debate. In an April 1888 letter to Bernard, Van Gogh referred to "funereal cypresses," though this is possibly similar to saying "stately oaks" or "weeping willows." One week after painting The Starry Night , he wrote to his brother Theo, "The cypresses are always occupying my thoughts. I should like to make something of them like the canvases of the sunflowers because it astonishes me that they have not yet been done as I see them." In

6106-706: Is the tree of death in the Mediterranean countries." Art historian Lauren Soth also finds a symbolist subtext in The Starry Night , saying that the painting is a "traditional religious subject in disguise" and a "sublimated image of [Van Gogh's] deepest religious feelings." Citing Van Gogh's avowed admiration for the paintings of Eugène Delacroix , and especially the earlier painter's use of Prussian blue and citron yellow in paintings of Christ , Soth theorizes that Van Gogh used these colors to represent Christ in The Starry Night . He criticizes Schapiro's and Loevgren's biblical interpretations, dependent as they are on

6248-450: Is visible in dark skies long after sunset. As the brightest point-like object in the sky, Venus is a commonly misreported " unidentified flying object ". As it orbits the Sun, Venus displays phases like those of the Moon in a telescopic view. The planet appears as a small and "full" disc when it is on the opposite side of the Sun (at superior conjunction ). Venus shows a larger disc and "quarter phase" at its maximum elongations from

6390-417: Is −4.14 with a standard deviation of 0.31. The brightest magnitude occurs during the crescent phase about one month before or after an inferior conjunction. Venus fades to about magnitude −3 when it is backlit by the Sun. The planet is bright enough to be seen in broad daylight, but is more easily visible when the Sun is low on the horizon or setting. As an inferior planet , it always lies within about 47° of

6532-567: The Irises from May 1889, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum , and the blue self-portrait from September 1889, in the Musée d'Orsay . The Starry Night was painted mid-June by around 18 June, the date he wrote to his brother Theo to say he had a new study of a starry sky. Although The Starry Night was painted during the day in Van Gogh's ground-floor studio, it would be inaccurate to state that

6674-487: The Magellan spacecraft imaged a highly reflective substance at the tops of the highest mountain peaks, a " Venus snow " that bore a strong resemblance to terrestrial snow. This substance likely formed from a similar process to snow, albeit at a far higher temperature. Too volatile to condense on the surface, it rose in gaseous form to higher elevations, where it is cooler and could precipitate. The identity of this substance

6816-604: The Lillie P. Bliss Bequest . Widely regarded as Van Gogh's magnum opus , The Starry Night is one of the most recognizable paintings in Western art. In the aftermath of the 23 December 1888 breakdown that resulted in the self-mutilation of his left ear, Van Gogh voluntarily admitted himself to the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole lunatic asylum on 8 May 1889. Housed in a former monastery, Saint-Paul-de-Mausole catered to

6958-419: The Sun . Venus "overtakes" Earth every 584 days as it orbits the Sun. As it does so, it changes from the "Evening Star", visible after sunset, to the "Morning Star", visible before sunrise. Although Mercury, the other inferior planet, reaches a maximum elongation of only 28° and is often difficult to discern in twilight, Venus is hard to miss when it is at its brightest. Its greater maximum elongation means it

7100-401: The decreasing eccentricity of Earth's orbit , the minimum distances will become greater over tens of thousands of years. From the year   1 to 5383, there are 526 approaches less than 40 million km (25 million mi); then, there are none for about 60,158 years. While Venus approaches Earth the closest, Mercury is more often the closest to Earth of all planets. Venus has

7242-422: The dissociation of water molecules from ultraviolet radiation. The solar wind then supplies energy that gives some of these ions sufficient velocity to escape Venus's gravity field. This erosion process results in a steady loss of low-mass hydrogen, helium, and oxygen ions, whereas higher-mass molecules, such as carbon dioxide, are more likely to be retained. Atmospheric erosion by the solar wind could have led to

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7384-470: The mistral that had such a profound effect on Van Gogh during the twenty-seven months he spent in Provence. (It was the mistral which triggered his first breakdown after entering the asylum, in July 1889, less than a month after painting The Starry Night .) Boime theorizes that the lighter shades of blue just above the horizon show the first light of morning. The village has been variously identified as either

7526-415: The sulphur in the atmosphere may indicate that there have been recent eruptions. About 80% of the Venusian surface is covered by smooth, volcanic plains, consisting of 70% plains with wrinkle ridges and 10% smooth or lobate plains. Two highland "continents" make up the rest of its surface area, one lying in the planet's northern hemisphere and the other just south of the equator. The northern continent

7668-497: The 16-year period between the Magellan spacecraft and Venus Express visits, with a difference of about 6.5   minutes. Because of the retrograde rotation, the length of a solar day on Venus is significantly shorter than the sidereal day, at 116.75 Earth days (making the Venusian solar day shorter than Mercury 's 176 Earth days — the 116-day figure is close to the average number of days it takes Mercury to slip underneath

7810-455: The 20th century. According to the present state of discussion, Post-Impressionism is a term best used within Rewald's definition in a strictly historical manner, concentrating on French art between 1886 and 1914, and re-considering the altered positions of impressionist painters like Claude Monet , Camille Pissarro , Auguste Renoir , and others—as well as all new schools and movements at

7952-420: The 20th century—yet this second volume remained unfinished. Rewald wrote that "the term 'Post-Impressionism' is not a very precise one, though a very convenient one"; convenient, when the term is by definition limited to French visual arts derived from Impressionism since 1886. Rewald's approach to historical data was narrative rather than analytic, and beyond this point he believed it would be sufficient to "let

8094-844: The British show which he described as a great exhibition of modern art. A wide and diverse variety of artists are called by this name in Canada. Among them are James Wilson Morrice , John Lyman , David Milne , and Tom Thomson , members of the Group of Seven , and Emily Carr . In 2001, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa organized the travelling exhibition The Birth of the Modern: Post-Impressionism in Canada, 1900-1920 . Venus Venus

8236-558: The Earth in its orbit [the number of days of Mercury's synodic orbital period]). One Venusian year is about 1.92   Venusian solar days. To an observer on the surface of Venus, the Sun would rise in the west and set in the east, although Venus's opaque clouds prevent observing the Sun from the planet's surface. Venus may have formed from the solar nebula with a different rotation period and obliquity, reaching its current state because of chaotic spin changes caused by planetary perturbations and tidal effects on its dense atmosphere,

8378-469: The Morning Star. Such a compression of depth serves to enhance the brightness of the planet. Soth uses Van Gogh's statement to his brother, that The Starry Night is "an exaggeration from the point of view of arrangement" to further his argument that the painting is "an amalgam of images." However, it is by no means certain that Van Gogh was using "arrangement" as a synonym for "composition." Van Gogh

8520-487: The Sun and thus receives only 25% of Mercury's solar irradiance , of 2,600 W/m (double that of Earth). Because of its runaway greenhouse effect , Venus has been identified by scientists such as Carl Sagan as a warning and research object linked to climate change on Earth. Venus's atmosphere is rich in primordial noble gases compared to that of Earth. This enrichment indicates an early divergence from Earth in evolution. An unusually large comet impact or accretion of

8662-477: The Sun's 11-year sunspot cycle . The existence of lightning in the atmosphere of Venus has been controversial since the first suspected bursts were detected by the Soviet Venera probes . In 2006–07, Venus Express clearly detected whistler mode waves , the signatures of lightning. Their intermittent appearance indicates a pattern associated with weather activity. According to these measurements,

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8804-422: The Sun, and appears at its brightest in the night sky. The planet presents a much larger thin "crescent" in telescopic views as it passes along the near side between Earth and the Sun. Venus displays its largest size and "new phase" when it is between Earth and the Sun (at inferior conjunction). Its atmosphere is visible through telescopes by the halo of sunlight refracted around it. The phases are clearly visible in

8946-590: The Venusian surface is estimated to be 300–600   million years old. Several lines of evidence point to ongoing volcanic activity on Venus. Sulfur dioxide concentrations in the upper atmosphere dropped by a factor of 10 between 1978 and 1986, jumped in 2006, and again declined 10-fold. This may mean that levels had been boosted several times by large volcanic eruptions. It has been suggested that Venusian lightning (discussed below) could originate from volcanic activity (i.e. volcanic lightning ). In January 2020, astronomers reported evidence that suggests that Venus

9088-524: The artistic circles they frequented (or were in opposition to), including: Furthermore, in his introduction to Post-Impressionism, Rewald opted for a second volume featuring Toulouse-Lautrec , Henri Rousseau "le Douanier", Les Nabis and Cézanne as well as the Fauves , the young Picasso and Gauguin's last trip to the South Seas ; it was to expand the period covered at least into the first decade of

9230-411: The atmosphere before reaching the ground. Without data from reflection seismology or knowledge of its moment of inertia , little direct information is available about the internal structure and geochemistry of Venus. The similarity in size and density between Venus and Earth suggests that they share a similar internal structure: a core , mantle , and crust . Like that of Earth, the Venusian core

9372-478: The atmosphere of Venus. On 29 January 2013, ESA scientists reported that the ionosphere of Venus streams outwards in a manner similar to "the ion tail seen streaming from a comet under similar conditions." In December 2015, and to a lesser extent in April and May 2016, researchers working on Japan's Akatsuki mission observed bow-shaped objects in the atmosphere of Venus. This was considered direct evidence of

9514-443: The atmosphere. Later research attributed the spectroscopic signal that was interpreted as phosphine to sulphur dioxide, or found that in fact there was no absorption line. Thermal inertia and the transfer of heat by winds in the lower atmosphere mean that the temperature of Venus's surface does not vary significantly between the planet's two hemispheres, those facing and not facing the Sun, despite Venus's slow rotation. Winds at

9656-409: The beginning of World War I , but limited their approach widely on the 1890s to France. Other European countries are pushed back to standard connotations, and Eastern Europe is completely excluded. In Germany, it was Paul Baum and Carl Schmitz-Pleis who, in retrospect, provided the decisive impetus. So, while a split may be seen between classical 'Impressionism' and 'Post-Impressionism' in 1886,

9798-438: The brain and often prompted bizarre, dramatic behavior." Symptoms of the seizures "resembled fireworks of electrical impulses in the brain." Van Gogh experienced his second breakdown in seven months in July 1889. Naifeh and Smith theorize that the seeds of this breakdown were present when Van Gogh painted The Starry Night , that in giving himself over to his imagination "his defenses had been breached." On that day in mid-June, in

9940-493: The brightest "star" in the painting, just to the viewer's right of the cypress tree, is Venus. The Moon is stylized, as astronomical records indicate that it was waning gibbous at the time Van Gogh painted the picture, and even if the phase of the Moon had been its waning crescent at the time, Van Gogh's Moon would not have been astronomically correct. (For other interpretations of the Moon, see below.) The one pictorial element that

10082-517: The carbon dioxide air. Venus's atmosphere could also have a potential thermal habitable zone at elevations of 54 to 48 km, with lower elevations inhibiting cell growth and higher elevations exceeding evaporation temperature. The putative detection of an absorption line of phosphine in Venus's atmosphere, with no known pathway for abiotic production, led to speculation in September 2020 that there could be extant life currently present in

10224-537: The caretaker of Van Gogh's legacy. In Paris in 1900 she sold the painting to a poet Julien Leclercq . In 1901 Leclercq sold it to Gauguin's old friend Émile Schuffenecker . Jo bought the painting back from Schuffenecker and in 1906 sold it to the Oldenzeel Gallery in Rotterdam. From 1906 to 1938 it was owned by Georgette P. van Stolk, of Rotterdam, who sold it to Paul Rosenberg , of Paris and New York. It

10366-461: The constellation Aries, he concurs with Boime on the visibility of Venus in Provence at the time the painting was executed. He also sees the depiction of a spiral galaxy in the sky, although he gives credit for the original to Anglo-Irish astronomer William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse , whose work Flammarion reproduced. Whitney also theorizes that the swirls in the sky could represent wind, evoking

10508-413: The context of Van Gogh's mental illness, which they identify as temporal lobe epilepsy , or latent epilepsy. "Not the kind," they write, "known since antiquity, that caused the limbs to jerk and the body to collapse ('the falling sickness ', as it was sometimes called), but a mental epilepsy—a seizing up of the mind: a collapse of thought, perception, reason, and emotion that manifested itself entirely in

10650-420: The core because the bottom of the liquid layer is much higher in temperature than the top. On Venus, a global resurfacing event may have shut down plate tectonics and led to a reduced heat flux through the crust. This insulating effect would cause the mantle temperature to increase, thereby reducing the heat flux out of the core. As a result, no internal geodynamo is available to drive a magnetic field. Instead,

10792-552: The crust. Then, over a period of about 100   million years, subduction occurs on an enormous scale, completely recycling the crust. Venusian craters range from 3 to 280 km (2 to 174 mi) in diameter. No craters are smaller than 3   km, because of the effects of the dense atmosphere on incoming objects. Objects with less than a certain kinetic energy are slowed so much by the atmosphere that they do not create an impact crater. Incoming projectiles less than 50 m (160 ft) in diameter will fragment and burn up in

10934-455: The currents and drag of its atmosphere. It takes 224.7 Earth days for Venus to complete an orbit around the Sun, and a Venusian solar year is just under two Venusian days long. The orbits of Venus and Earth are the closest between any two Solar System planets, approaching each other in synodic periods of 1.6 years. Venus and Earth have the lowest difference in gravitational potential of any pair of Solar System planets. This allows Venus to be

11076-598: The cypresses "function as rustic and natural obelisks" providing a "link between the heavens and the earth." (Some commentators see one tree, others see two or more.) Loevgren reminds the reader that "the cypress is the tree of death in the Mediterranean countries." Art historian Ronald Pickvance says that with "its arbitrary collage of separate motifs," The Starry Night "is overtly stamped as an ' abstraction '". Pickvance claims that cypress trees were not visible facing east from Van Gogh's room, and he includes them with

11218-412: The daytime with overcast clouds". Strong 300 km/h (185 mph) winds at the cloud tops go around Venus about every four to five Earth days. Winds on Venus move at up to 60 times the speed of its rotation, whereas Earth's fastest winds are only 10–20% rotation speed. The surface of Venus is effectively isothermal ; it retains a constant temperature not only between the two hemispheres but between

11360-596: The daytime. French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte once witnessed a daytime apparition of the planet while at a reception in Luxembourg . Another historical daytime observation of the planet took place during the inauguration of the American president Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C., on 4   March 1865. A transit of Venus is the appearance of Venus in front of the Sun, during inferior conjunction . Since

11502-438: The development of French art since Édouard Manet . Post-Impressionists extended Impressionism while rejecting its limitations: they continued using vivid colours, sometimes using impasto (thick application of paint) and painting from life, but were more inclined to emphasize geometric forms, distort form for expressive effect, and use unnatural or modified colour. The Post-Impressionists were dissatisfied with what they felt

11644-578: The early solar system orbital dynamics have shown that the eccentricity of the Venus orbit may have been substantially larger in the past, reaching values as high as 0.31 and possibly impacting early climate evolution. All planets in the Solar System orbit the Sun in an anticlockwise direction as viewed from above Earth's north pole. Most planets rotate on their axes in an anticlockwise direction, but Venus rotates clockwise in retrograde rotation once every 243 Earth days—the slowest rotation of any planet. This Venusian sidereal day lasts therefore longer than

11786-547: The end and the extent of 'Post-Impressionism' remains under discussion. For Bowness and his contributors as well as for Rewald, ' Cubism ' was an absolutely fresh start, and so Cubism has been seen in France since the beginning, and later in England. Meanwhile, Eastern European artists, however, did not care so much for western traditions, and proceeded to manners of painting called abstract and suprematic —terms expanding far into

11928-442: The equator and the poles. Venus's minute axial tilt —less than 3°, compared to 23° on Earth—also minimizes seasonal temperature variation. Altitude is one of the few factors that affect Venusian temperatures. The highest point on Venus, Maxwell Montes , is therefore the coolest point on Venus, with a temperature of about 655 K (380 °C; 715 °F) and an atmospheric pressure of about 4.5 MPa (45 bar). In 1995,

12070-415: The existence of perhaps the largest stationary gravity waves in the solar system. Venus orbits the Sun at an average distance of about 0.72  AU (108 million  km ; 67 million  mi ), and completes an orbit every 224.7 days. Although all planetary orbits are elliptical , Venus's orbit is currently the closest to circular, with an eccentricity of less than 0.01. Simulations of

12212-575: The final absorption of the artist by the cosmos" and which "gives a never-to-be-forgotten sensation of standing on the threshold of eternity." Loevgren praises Schapiro's "eloquent interpretation" of the painting as an apocalyptic vision and advances his symbolist theory concerning the eleven stars in one of Joseph 's dreams in the Old Testament Book of Genesis . Loevgren asserts that the pictorial elements of The Starry Night "are visualized in purely symbolic terms" and notes that "the cypress

12354-621: The first observation-based estimate of 3,500 km. The principal difference between the two planets is the lack of evidence for plate tectonics on Venus, possibly because its crust is too strong to subduct without water to make it less viscous . This results in reduced heat loss from the planet, preventing it from cooling and providing a likely explanation for its lack of an internally generated magnetic field . Instead, Venus may lose its internal heat in periodic major resurfacing events. In 1967, Venera 4 found Venus's magnetic field to be much weaker than that of Earth. This magnetic field

12496-460: The first paintings of the view was F611 Mountainous Landscape Behind Saint-Rémy , now in Copenhagen. Van Gogh made several sketches for the painting, of which F1547 The Enclosed Wheatfield After a Storm is typical. It is unclear whether the painting was made in his studio or outside. In his 9 June letter describing it, he mentions he had been working outside for a few days. Van Gogh described

12638-474: The following 200 years , but most were determined to be stars in the vicinity. Alex Alemi's and David Stevenson 's 2006 study of models of the early Solar System at the California Institute of Technology shows Venus likely had at least one moon created by a huge impact event billions of years ago. About 10   million   years later, according to the study, another impact reversed

12780-429: The heat from the core is reheating the crust. One possibility is that Venus has no solid inner core, or that its core is not cooling, so that the entire liquid part of the core is at approximately the same temperature. Another possibility is that its core has already been completely solidified. The state of the core is highly dependent on the concentration of sulphur , which is unknown at present. Another possibility

12922-399: The hypothesis of a spin-orbit resonance with Earth has been discounted. Venus has no natural satellites. It has several trojan asteroids : the quasi-satellite 524522 Zoozve and two other temporary trojans, 2001 CK 32 and 2012 XE 133 . In the 17th century, Giovanni Cassini reported a moon orbiting Venus, which was named Neith and numerous sightings were reported over

13064-516: The impact craters, mountains, and valleys commonly found on rocky planets. Among these are flat-topped volcanic features called " farra ", which look somewhat like pancakes and range in size from 20 to 50 km (12 to 31 mi) across, and from 100 to 1,000 m (330 to 3,280 ft) high; radial, star-like fracture systems called "novae"; features with both radial and concentric fractures resembling spider webs, known as " arachnoids "; and "coronae", circular rings of fractures sometimes surrounded by

13206-534: The impressionists he had met in Paris, especially Claude Monet , Van Gogh also favored working in series. He had painted his series of sunflowers in Arles, and he painted the series of cypresses and wheat fields at Saint-Rémy. The Starry Night belongs to this latter series, as well as to a small series of nocturnes he initiated in Arles. The nocturne series was limited by the difficulties posed by painting such scenes from nature, i.e., at night. The first painting in

13348-420: The last consignment weren't what they ought to become, however, I dare urge you to believe that in landscapes one will continue to mass things by means of a drawing style that seeks to express the entanglement of the masses." But although Van Gogh periodically defended the practices of Gauguin and Bernard, each time he inevitably repudiated them and continued with his preferred method of painting from nature. Like

13490-402: The lightning rate is at least half that on Earth, however other instruments have not detected lightning at all. The origin of any lightning remains unclear, but could originate from clouds or Venusian volcanoes . In 2007, Venus Express discovered that a huge double atmospheric polar vortex exists at the south pole. Venus Express discovered, in 2011, that an ozone layer exists high in

13632-492: The loss of most of Venus's water during the first billion years after it formed. However, the planet may have retained a dynamo for its first 2–3 billion years, so the water loss may have occurred more recently. The erosion has increased the ratio of higher-mass deuterium to lower-mass hydrogen in the atmosphere 100 times compared to the rest of the solar system. Venus has a dense atmosphere composed of 96.5% carbon dioxide , 3.5% nitrogen—both exist as supercritical fluids at

13774-470: The lowest gravitational potential difference to Earth than any other planet, needing the lowest delta-v to transfer between them. Tidally Venus exerts the third strongest tidal force on Earth, after the Moon and the Sun, though significantly less. To the naked eye , Venus appears as a white point of light brighter than any other planet or star (apart from the Sun). The planet's mean apparent magnitude

13916-420: The most accessible destination and a useful gravity assist waypoint for interplanetary flights from Earth. Venus figures prominently in human culture and in the history of astronomy. Orbiting inferiorly (inside of Earth's orbit), it always appears close to the Sun in Earth's sky, as either a "morning star" or an "evening star". While this is also true for Mercury , Venus appears more prominent, since it

14058-411: The museums". He achieved this by reducing objects to their basic shapes while retaining the saturated colours of Impressionism. The Impressionist Camille Pissarro experimented with Neo-Impressionist ideas between the mid-1880s and the early 1890s. Discontented with what he referred to as romantic Impressionism, he investigated pointillism , which he called scientific Impressionism, before returning to

14200-475: The name of Post-Impressionism. This merely stated their position in time relatively to the Impressionist movement." John Rewald limited the scope to the years between 1886 and 1892 in his pioneering publication on Post-Impressionism: From Van Gogh to Gauguin (1956). Rewald considered this a continuation of his 1946 study, History of Impressionism , and pointed out that a "subsequent volume dedicated to

14342-408: The night sky. "It would be so simple and would account so much for the terrible things in life, which now amaze and wound us so if life had yet another hemisphere, invisible it is true, but where one lands when one dies." "Hope is in the stars," he wrote, but he was quick to point out that "this earth is a planet too, and consequently a star, or celestial orb." And he stated flatly that The Starry Night

14484-404: The orbit of Venus is slightly inclined relative to Earth's orbit, most inferior conjunctions with Earth, which occur every synodic period of 1.6 years, do not produce a transit of Venus above Earth. Consequently, Venus transits above Earth only occur when an inferior conjunction takes place during some days of June or December, the time where the orbits of Venus and Earth cross a straight line with

14626-437: The other being Mercury , that have no moons . Conditions perhaps favourable for life on Venus have been identified at its cloud layers. Venus may have had liquid surface water early in its history with a habitable environment , before a runaway greenhouse effect evaporated any water and turned Venus into its present state. The rotation of Venus has been slowed and turned against its orbital direction ( retrograde ) by

14768-438: The picture was painted from memory. The view has been identified as the one from his bedroom window, facing east, a view which Van Gogh painted variations of no fewer than twenty-one times, including The Starry Night . "Through the iron-barred window", he wrote to his brother, Theo, around 23 May 1889, "I can see an enclosed square of wheat ... above which, in the morning, I watch the sun rise in all its glory." Van Gogh depicted

14910-405: The planet underwent a global resurfacing event 300–600   million years ago, followed by a decay in volcanism. Whereas Earth's crust is in continuous motion, Venus is thought to be unable to sustain such a process. Without plate tectonics to dissipate heat from its mantle, Venus instead undergoes a cyclical process in which mantle temperatures rise until they reach a critical level that weakens

15052-421: The planet's spin direction and the resulting tidal deceleration caused the Venusian moon gradually to spiral inward until it collided with Venus. If later impacts created moons, these were removed in the same way. An alternative explanation for the lack of satellites is the effect of strong solar tides, which can destabilize large satellites orbiting the inner terrestrial planets. The orbital space of Venus has

15194-581: The planet's surface with a density 6.5% that of water —and traces of other gases including sulphur dioxide . The mass of its atmosphere is 92 times that of Earth's, whereas the pressure at its surface is about 93 times that at Earth's—a pressure equivalent to that at a depth of nearly 1 km ( 5 ⁄ 8  mi) under Earth's ocean surfaces. The density at the surface is 65 kg/m (4.1 lb/cu ft), 6.5% that of water or 50 times as dense as Earth's atmosphere at 293 K (20 °C; 68 °F) at sea level. The CO 2 -rich atmosphere generates

15336-443: The reds moving through to pure oranges, intensifying even more in the flesh tones up to the chromes, passing into the pinks and marrying with the olive and Veronese greens. As an impressionist arrangement of colours, I've never devised anything better." (The painting he is referring to is La Berceuse , which is a realistic portrait of Augustine Roulin with an imaginative floral background.) And to Bernard in late November 1889: "But this

15478-560: The same letter he mentioned "two studies of cypresses of that difficult shade of bottle green ." These statements suggest that Van Gogh was interested in the trees more for their formal qualities than for their symbolic connotation. Schapiro refers to the cypress in the painting as a "vague symbol of a human striving." Boime calls it the "symbolic counterpart of Van Gogh's own striving for the Infinite through non-orthodox channels." Art historian Vojtech Jirat-Wasiutynski says that for Van Gogh

15620-430: The same year. "When Gauguin was in Arles, I once or twice allowed myself to be led astray into abstraction, as you know. . . . But that was a delusion, dear friend, and one soon comes up against a brick wall. . . And yet, once again I allowed myself to be led astray into reaching for stars that are too big—another failure—and I have had my fill of that." Van Gogh here is referring to the expressionistic swirls which dominate

15762-440: The search for style often harms other qualities, the fact is that I feel greatly driven to seek style if you like, but I mean by that a more manly and more deliberate drawing. If that will make me more like Bernard or Gauguin, I can't do anything about it. But am inclined to believe that in the long run, you'd get used to it." And later in the same letter, he wrote, "I know very well that the studies drawn with long, sinuous lines from

15904-442: The second half of the post-impressionist period": Post-Impressionism: From Gauguin to Matisse , was to follow. This volume would extend the period covered to other artistic movements derived from Impressionism, though confined to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Rewald focused on such outstanding early Post-Impressionists active in France as van Gogh , Gauguin , Seurat , and Redon . He explored their relationships as well as

16046-533: The second of the two landscapes he mentions he was working on, in a letter to his sister Wil on 16 June 1889. This is F719 Green Wheat Field with Cypress , now in Prague, and the first painting at the asylum he painted en plein air . F1548 Wheatfield, Saint-Rémy de Provence , now in New York, is a study for it. Two days later, Vincent wrote to Theo stating that he had painted "a starry sky". The Starry Night

16188-520: The series was Café Terrace at Night , painted in Arles in early September 1888, followed by Starry Night (Over the Rhône) later that same month. Van Gogh's written statements concerning these paintings provide further insight into his intentions for painting night studies in general and The Starry Night in particular. Soon after he arrives in Arles in February 1888, Van Gogh wrote to Theo, "I need

16330-442: The size of South America. A network of fractures and faults covers much of this area. There is recent evidence of lava flow on Venus (2024), such as flows on Sif Mons, a shield volcano, and on Niobe Planitia, a flat plain. There are visible calderas . The planet has few impact craters , demonstrating that the surface is relatively young, at 300–600   million years old. Venus has some unique surface features in addition to

16472-528: The size of the hot spots could not be measured, but are likely to have been in the 800–1,100 K (527–827 °C; 980–1,520 °F) range, relative to a normal temperature of 740 K (467 °C; 872 °F). In 2023, scientists reexamined topographical images of the Maat Mons region taken by the Magellan orbiter. Using computer simulations, they determined that the topography had changed during an 8-month interval, and concluded that active volcanism

16614-406: The sources speak for themselves." Rival terms like Modernism or Symbolism were never as easy to handle, for they covered literature, architecture and other arts as well, and they expanded to other countries. To meet the recent discussion, the connotations of the term 'Post-Impressionism' were challenged again: Alan Bowness and his collaborators expanded the period covered forward to 1914 and

16756-410: The strongest greenhouse effect in the Solar System, creating surface temperatures of at least 735 K (462 °C; 864 °F). This makes the Venusian surface hotter than Mercury 's, which has a minimum surface temperature of 53 K (−220 °C; −364 °F) and maximum surface temperature of 700 K (427 °C; 801 °F), even though Venus is nearly twice Mercury's distance from

16898-443: The sunlight that falls on them back into space, and since they cover the whole planet they prevent visual observation of Venus's surface. The permanent cloud cover means that although Venus is closer than Earth to the Sun, it receives less sunlight on the ground, with only 10% of the received sunlight reaching the surface, resulting in average daytime levels of illumination at the surface of 14,000 lux , comparable to that on Earth "in

17040-459: The surface are slow, moving at a few kilometres per hour, but because of the high density of the atmosphere at the surface, they exert a significant amount of force against obstructions, and transport dust and small stones across the surface. This alone would make it difficult for a human to walk through, even without the heat, pressure, and lack of oxygen. Above the dense CO 2 layer are thick clouds, consisting mainly of sulfuric acid , which

17182-489: The surface atmosphere a supercritical fluid out of mainly supercritical carbon dioxide and some supercritical nitrogen. The Venusian surface was a subject of speculation until some of its secrets were revealed by planetary science in the 20th century. Venera landers in 1975 and 1982 returned images of a surface covered in sediment and relatively angular rocks. The surface was mapped in detail by Magellan in 1990–91. The ground shows evidence of extensive volcanism, and

17324-503: The surface. After a period of 600 million to several billion years, solar forcing from rising luminosity of the Sun and possibly large volcanic resurfacing caused the evaporation of the original water and the current atmosphere. A runaway greenhouse effect was created once a critical level of greenhouse gases (including water) was added to its atmosphere. Although the surface conditions on Venus are no longer hospitable to any Earth-like life that may have formed before this event, there

17466-420: The surrounding basaltic plains measured by Venus Express and Magellan , indicating a different, possibly a more felsic , mineral assemblage. The mechanism to generate a large amount of felsic crust usually requires the presence of water ocean and plate tectonics , implying that habitable condition had existed on early Venus with large bodies of water at some point. However, the nature of tessera terrains

17608-629: The swirling figure in the central portion of the sky in The Starry Night to represent either a spiral galaxy or a comet, photographs of which had also been published in popular media. He asserts that the only non-realistic elements of the painting are the village and the swirls in the sky. These swirls represent Van Gogh's understanding of the cosmos as a living, dynamic place. Harvard astronomer Charles A. Whitney conducted his astronomical study of The Starry Night contemporaneously with but independent of Boime (who spent almost his entire career at U.C.L.A.). While Whitney does not share Boime's certainty about

17750-487: The theories and then popular science fiction about Venus being a habitable or inhabited planet. Venus is one of the four terrestrial planets in the Solar System, meaning that it is a rocky body like Earth. It is similar to Earth in size and mass and is often described as Earth's "sister" or "twin". Venus is close to spherical due to its slow rotation. Venus has a diameter of 12,103.6 km (7,520.8 mi)—only 638.4 km (396.7 mi) less than Earth's—and its mass

17892-476: The three pictures do have in common is exaggerated color and brushwork of the type that Theo referred to when he criticized Van Gogh for his "search for style [that] takes away the real sentiment of things" in The Starry Night . On two other occasions around this time, Van Gogh used the word "arrangement" to refer to color, similar to the way James Abbott McNeill Whistler used the term. In a letter to Gauguin in January 1889, he wrote, "As an arrangement of colours:

18034-450: The topographical elements of Van Gogh's view from his asylum window but also the celestial elements, identifying not only Venus but also the constellation Aries . He suggests that Van Gogh originally intended to paint a gibbous moon but "reverted to a more traditional image" of the crescent moon, and theorizes that the bright aureole around the resulting crescent is a remnant of the original gibbous version. He recounts Van Gogh's interest in

18176-571: The turn of the century: from Cloisonnism to Cubism . The declarations of war, in July/August 1914, indicate probably far more than the beginning of a World War —they signal a major break in European cultural history, too. Along with general art history information given about "Post-Impressionism" works, there are many museums that offer additional history, information and gallery works, both online and in house, that can help viewers understand

18318-428: The upper center portion of The Starry Night . Theo referred to these pictorial elements in a letter to Vincent dated 22 October 1889: "I sense what preoccupies you in the new canvases like the village in the moonlight [ The Starry Night ] or the mountains, but I feel that the search for style takes away the real sentiment of things." Vincent responded in early November, "Despite what you say in your previous letter, that

18460-434: The view at different times of the day and under various weather conditions, such as the sunrise, moonrise, sunshine-filled days, overcast days, windy days, and one day with rain. While the hospital staff did not allow Van Gogh to paint in his bedroom, he was able there to make sketches in ink or charcoal on paper; eventually, he would base newer variations on previous versions. The pictorial element uniting all of these paintings

18602-406: The village and the swirls in the sky as products of Van Gogh's imagination. Boime asserts that the cypresses were visible in the east, as does Jirat-Wasiutyński. Van Gogh biographers Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith concur, saying that Van Gogh "telescoped" the view in certain of the pictures of the view from his window, and it stands to reason that Van Gogh would do this in a painting featuring

18744-532: The wealthy and was less than half full when Van Gogh arrived, allowing him to occupy not only a second-story bedroom but also a ground-floor room for use as a painting studio. During the year Van Gogh stayed at the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence , the prolific output of paintings he had begun in Arles continued. During this period, he produced some of the best-known works of his career, including

18886-494: The woman in pain of birth , girded with the sun and moon and crowned with stars, whose newborn child is threatened by the dragon." (Schapiro, in the same volume, also professes to see an image of a mother and child in the clouds in Landscape with Olive Trees , painted at the same time and often regarded as a pendant to The Starry Night .) Art historian Sven Loevgren expands on Schapiro's approach, again calling The Starry Night

19028-580: The writings of Victor Hugo and Jules Verne as a possible inspiration for his belief in an afterlife on stars or planets. he provides a detailed discussion of the well-publicized advances in astronomy that took place during Van Gogh's lifetime. Boime asserts that while Van Gogh never mentioned astronomer Camille Flammarion in his letters, he believes that Van Gogh must have been aware of Flammarion's popular illustrated publications, which included drawings of spiral nebulae (as galaxies were then called) as seen and photographed through telescopes. Boime interprets

19170-495: Was "not a return to the romantic or to religious ideas." Noted art historian Meyer Schapiro highlights the expressionistic aspects of The Starry Night , saying it was created under the "pressure of feeling" and that it is a "visionary [painting] inspired by a religious mood." Schapiro theorizes that the "hidden content" of the work refers to the New Testament Book of Revelation , revealing an " apocalyptic theme of

19312-426: Was first used by art critic Roger Fry in 1906. Critic Frank Rutter in a review of the Salon d'Automne published in Art News , 15 October 1910, described Othon Friesz as a "post-impressionist leader"; there was also an advert for the show The Post-Impressionists of France . Three weeks later, Roger Fry used the term again when he organised the 1910 exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists , defining it as

19454-478: Was not visible from Van Gogh's cell is the village, which is based on a sketch (F1541v) made from a hillside above the village of Saint-Rémy. Pickvance thought F1541v was done later, and the steeple more Dutch than Provençal, a conflation of several Van Gogh had painted and drawn in his Nuenen period , and thus the first of his " reminisces of the North " he was to paint and draw early the following year. Hulsker thought

19596-521: Was one of the paintings he did not send. Finally, in a letter to painter Émile Bernard from late November 1889, Van Gogh referred to the painting as a "failure." Van Gogh argued with Bernard and especially Paul Gauguin as to whether one should paint from nature, as Van Gogh preferred, or paint what Gauguin called "abstractions": paintings conceived in the imagination, or de tête . In the letter to Bernard, Van Gogh recounted his experiences when Gauguin lived with him from October 23, 1888, to December 25 of

19738-575: Was speaking of three paintings, one of which was The Starry Night , when he made this comment: "The olive trees with white cloud and background of mountains, as well as the Moonrise and the Night effect," as he called it, "these are exaggerations from the point of view of the arrangement, their lines are contorted like those of the ancient woodcuts." The first two pictures are universally acknowledged to be realistic, non-composite views of their subjects. What

19880-458: Was the cause. Almost a thousand impact craters on Venus are evenly distributed across its surface. On other cratered bodies, such as Earth and the Moon, craters show a range of states of degradation. On the Moon, degradation is caused by subsequent impacts, whereas on Earth it is caused by wind and rain erosion. On Venus, about 85% of the craters are in pristine condition. The number of craters, together with their well-preserved condition, indicates

20022-404: Was the triviality of subject matter and the loss of structure in Impressionist paintings, though they did not agree on the way forward. Georges Seurat and his followers concerned themselves with pointillism , the systematic use of tiny dots of colour. Paul Cézanne set out to restore a sense of order and structure to painting, to "make of Impressionism something solid and durable, like the art of

20164-605: Was through Rosenberg that the Museum of Modern Art acquired the painting in 1941. The painting was investigated by scientists at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The pigment analysis has shown that the sky was painted with ultramarine and cobalt blue , and for the stars and the moon, Van Gogh employed the rare pigment indian yellow together with zinc yellow . Post-Impressionism The term Post-Impressionism

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