Vincent van Gogh painted The Starry Night in June 1889, at the Saint Paul de Mausole asylum in Saint Remy de Provence, in southern France, where he was a voluntary patient. He did not paint it outdoors under the stars. He painted it by day, in a studio, from memory, mixing what he saw from his window with things that were not in it.
The painting looks like the work of a man who knew he had made something great. He did not think so.
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In November 1889, writing to the painter Émile Bernard, Van Gogh admitted to a fault he had committed again: “once again I'm allowing myself to do stars too big, &c., new setback, and I've enough of that.” The editors of his letters believe he was probably referring to this canvas.
In September he had sent his brother Theo a parcel of recent canvases, a night study among them, and picked out six he thought “a little good.” The night study was not one of the six.
So how did a canvas its painter wrote off become the picture everyone knows?
What You'll Discover
What he really saw from his window.
The village he never saw.
What his brother thought of it.
What he called it himself.
How it reached New York.