What it is
A swirling night sky over a small village, with a tall dark cypress rising at the left, painted from memory after looking out at dawn from Van Gogh's room at the asylum in Saint-Rémy.
What it represents
Turbulence and calm held in a single frame. The sky churns while the village below sleeps.
The symbolism
The cypress joins earth to sky, and in Mediterranean cemeteries it is also a tree of mourning. The stars are huge and kind, wrapped in spirals of movement. Van Gogh found in the night a way to see the inner storm as something beautiful.
Poems and letters beside it
poem
Sonnet 29
William Shakespeare (1609)
Shakespeare's speaker climbs out of despair into a sudden, quiet gratitude. Van Gogh's night sky holds the same turn, from feeling alone to being held by something enormous.
