The Surprising Belief Van Gogh Had About His Most Famous Painting

Reading Van Gogh’s nocturnal masterpiece

The Starry Night (June 1889) by Vincent van Gogh. Oil on canvas. 73 × 92 cm. Museum of Modern Art, New York, U.S. Image source Wikimedia Commons

We often experience the night sky as countless pinpricks of light set against an impossibly dark and silent black — such is the way a starry night appears to the naked eye.

Yet Vincent van Gogh painted something quite different: a spiralling light-filled…