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Starry Night

Edvard Munch, 1893

Edvard Munch's Starry Night, painted in 1893, belongs to the J. Paul Getty Museum and is associated with its Getty Center site. This is a quiet, brooding nocturne, a coastal night scene built from dark blues, heavy shapes and a few points of light. It is a different painting from Vincent van Gogh's better-known work of the same name, and it rewards slow, patient looking.

Where to see it

Starry Night is in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, at the Getty Center. Paintings can be moved, rotated off view or lent to other institutions, so check the J. Paul Getty Museum's official website for current display status before you visit. The website also lists opening hours, ticketing and directions to the Getty Center.

What to look for in person

A sky built from deep blue

Start with the sky. Munch fills much of the canvas with layered, shifting blues rather than flat darkness, and the stars appear as small, scattered points instead of dramatic bursts. Notice how restrained the light is: the painting is about the stillness of a northern summer night, not spectacle. Step close to see how the blues vary in tone and density across the surface, then step back to see how they merge into one enveloping atmosphere that seems to press gently down on the land below.

Shoreline and trees as simplified shapes

Look at how the landscape is drawn. The coastline curves and swells rather than following a strict line, and the trees read as dark, rounded masses instead of individually described trunks and leaves. This simplification is typical of Munch in the 1890s, when he moved away from detailed observation toward forms that carry feeling. Follow the edge where land meets water and you will see how the curving line leads the eye through the picture, giving a calm scene an undercurrent of unease.

Mood over description

Starry Night is a substantial canvas, 135.6 cm tall, large enough that the dark scene can fill your field of vision if you stand at a moderate distance. Give yourself time with it. Night pictures often reveal themselves slowly: shapes that first look like a single shadow gradually separate into trees, shore and water. Pay attention to how you feel as your eyes adjust. Munch was less interested in recording a particular view than in conveying the emotional charge of a place, and that charge is the real subject here.

About the painting

Edvard Munch, the Norwegian painter best known today for The Scream, made Starry Night in 1893, the same period in which he was developing his most influential imagery. In these years Munch was closely connected with the Symbolist currents of European art, which valued inner experience, memory and mood over faithful reproduction of the visible world. Starry Night shows that approach applied to landscape. Rather than a panoramic or picturesque view, he offers a compressed, darkened scene in which sky, trees, shore and water are reduced to broad shapes and a narrow range of deep colours. For visitors, the painting is a useful counterpoint to the expressive figure paintings for which Munch is famous. There are no anxious faces or dramatic gestures here; the emotion lives in the curve of a shoreline, the weight of a tree mass and the cool glow of a night sky. Many of Munch's landscapes from this decade draw on the coast of southern Norway, where he spent summers, and the long, pale nights of the northern summer are often seen as part of their atmosphere. The work is also a reminder that the title Starry Night is shared with Van Gogh's well-known 1889 painting. The two are unrelated works by different artists, and Munch's version is calmer and more inward. When you stand in front of it, try comparing your first impression with what you notice after several minutes; the gradual emergence of forms from darkness is one of the painting's quiet pleasures.

Key facts

More by Edvard Munch

• Vampire — Munch Museum
• Jealousy
• Anxiety — Munch Museum
• Inger on the Beach
• Night in Saint-Cloud — National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design
• Self-Portrait with Cigarette — National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design
• Self-Portrait. Between the Clock and the Bed — Munch Museum
• Vampire — Munch Museum
• Dance of Life — National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design
• Puberty — National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design
• Evening on Karl Johan
• The Scream — National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design

Sources

• Wikidata Q18209775
• www.getty.edu