1889: the year that splits

The record dates The Starry Night to 1889. That year is the hinge of van Gogh's last stretch of work: it opens in Arles and continues, from the spring, at Saint-Rémy, where the catalogue's fourth period begins. The record gives the year and not the month, so this entry places the canvas in 1889 and goes no further. What can be said with confidence is that this is not the Arles night picture: Starry Night Over the Rhone is dated 1888 and held by the Musée d'Orsay, and the two are constantly confused.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 73.7 x 92.1 cm and is held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, one of three works in this catalogue recorded in that collection; another is Corridor in the asylum, also dated 1889. The measured palette resolves to a single dominant family: blue.

The Saint-Rémy year around it

The record holds 116 painted works dated 1889, and their titles describe a narrow world: fifteen works here name Saint-Paul or a hospital and fourteen of those are dated 1889; five name an asylum, all of them 1889; twelve name olive trees and ten name wheat. This canvas belongs to that year. Beyond the date, the dimensions and the collection, this catalogue makes no claim about the circumstances in which it was made.