Starry Night Over the Rhone by Vincent Van Gogh

The Enigma of the Painting

Starry Night Over the Rhone by Vincent van Gogh at the Musée d’Orsay – Photograph Raymond Martinez 2003

A Photographic, Astronomical, and Artistic Investigation

by Raymond Martinez

The Mystery of the Big Dipper

in Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night Over the Rhône (1888)

Origin of the painting

Context: Painted in Arles, along the banks of the Rhône River, in late September 1888.
Medium : oil on canvas
Dimensions : (H × L) : 72,5 cm × 92 cm
Location : Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France (source Wikipédia) ¹

Description :

The painter depicts the city of Arles at night with the Rhône River. The composition can be divided into two parts:

The terrestrial landscape: The city and the river, where the glow of gas lamps on the quays shimmers across the water’s surface. In the foreground, a couple stands on the riverbank facing the viewer, beside moored boats. In the background, the dark silhouettes of rooftops and church steeples rise against the deep blue sky.
The celestial landscape: Above, a gradient of blues reveals a star-studded sky, with the Big Dipper constellation prominently displayed at its center.

Note: Vincent van Gogh is one of the rare artists to have captured the starry sky in his work.

Two more of his paintings also depict the night sky:

Café terrace at night painted in Arles in September 1888
The Starry Night painted in Saint Rémy de Provence in June 1889

Context of Creation

Starry Night Over the Rhône was painted in late September 1888 in Arles, by the Rhône, near the current Lamartine Square, where Van Gogh’s home, the Yellow House, was located. If the painting was done on site, we can assume the artist did not travel long distances at night with his equipment. Candles or a gas lamp may have helped him see in a place that was certainly poorly lit.

Van Gogh in Arles (September 1888):

In September 1888, Van Gogh had been living in Arles for seven months. He had left Paris in pursuit of the radiant light of the South, which he saw as the closest thing to his idealized vision of Japan. Settled in the Yellow House on Place Lamartine, just a stone’s throw from the spot where he painted this work, he was deeply immersed in an ambitious project: founding an artists’ community. He eagerly awaited the arrival of Paul Gauguin, hoping their collaboration would bring his dream to life.

This was one of the most prolific yet fragile periods of his career. Isolated and entirely dependent on his brother Theo for financial support, he battled profound anxiety, which seeps into his letters. The Starry Night Over the Rhône emerged from this intense tension between creative fervor and psychological vulnerability. His daring decision to paint at night reveals a fierce determination to capture what the stars and gaslights disclose, realities that daylight obscures.

Letter from Vincent van Gogh to his sister Wilhelmina

The date on which Vincent van Gogh painted this picture is confirmed by a letter ² sent to his sister Wilhelmina dated September 9 and 16, 1888 in which he states his intention to paint the starry night:

“I definitely want to paint a starry sky now. It often seems to me that the night is even more richly coloured than the day, coloured in the most intense violets, blues and greens.

If you look carefully you’ll see that some stars are lemony, others have a pink, green, forget-me-not blue glow. And without labouring the point, it’s clear that to paint a starry sky it’s not nearly enough to put white spots on blue-black.”

Letter to Theo

Then a letter ³ to his brother Theo dated September 29 when the painting is finished :

“Included herewith little croquis of a square no. 30 canvas — the starry sky at last, actually painted at night, under a gas-lamp. The sky is green-blue, the water is royal blue, the areas of land are mauve. The town is blue and violet. The gaslight is yellow, and its reflections are red gold and go right down to green bronze. Against the green-blue field of the sky the Great Bear has a green and pink sparkle whose discreet paleness contrasts with the harsh gold of the gaslight. Two small coloured figures of lovers in the foreground”

Here is a sketch attached to the letter:

Letter to Eugene Boch

Finally a letter ⁴ to his friend the painter Eugène Boch dated October 2, 1888:

«And lastly, a study of the Rhône, of the town under gaslight and reflected in the blue river.

With the starry sky above — with the Great Bear — with a pink and green sparkle on the cobalt blue field of the night sky, while the light of the town and its harsh reflections are of a red gold and a green tinged with bronze.»

In this letter, Van Gogh attached this sketch of the painting.

Where did Vincent van Gogh put his easel?

As for where the painting was painted, a sentence from the letter to his sister indicates that he certainly painted it on the spot:

“It amuses me enormously to paint the night on the spot. Formerly one drew and painted the picture daytime from the drawing. But I find it suits me to paint the thing immediately. It’s quite true that in the dark I can take a blue for a green, a blue lilac for a pink lilac, since one can’t clearly distinguish the quality of the tone. But it’s the only way of getting away from our conventional night with its poor, pale, whitish light, while a simple candle already gives us the richest yellows and oranges.”

Vincent states that he wants to paint on-site, directly from nature. However, standing in front of the painting, I had never really questioned the exact spot where he set up his easel.

In 1999, the heritage service of the city of Arles installed several enameled markers reproducing Van Gogh’s paintings at the exact locations where they were believed to have been painted.

When I first stood in front of the reproduction of The Starry Night over the Rhône, a question immediately struck me. If Van Gogh painted the canvas at the designated spot, he was facing the Rhône, with the city on his left, looking downstream, which means he was facing South-West.

Yet, in the sky of the painting, we clearly see the Big Dipper (Ursa Major). In his letters to Theo and Eugène Boch, he specifically names this constellation. My experience as an amateur astronomer tells me that the Big Dipper is a circumpolar constellation that is only visible looking North, never toward the South-West.

Something didn’t add up.

That is where the investigation began.

We can compare the current landscape with that of the painting:

Photograph and assembly Raymond Martinez © 2012

The positioning takes into account the steeples of the St. Julien and St. Martin du Méjan churches, the curve of the Rhône, and the Trinquetaille Bridge.

The angle in which the landscape of the painting is inscribed – Image Google Earth

The red circle represents the supposed location of Van Gogh’s easel,

Coordinates: 43° 40′ 56″ N 4° 37′ 48″ E – Table Orientation: South West

Now let’s take a look at the starry sky in the artwork:

Using the Stellarium planetarium software, we can reconstruct the exact night sky Van Gogh saw above Arles in late September 1888, looking southwest. The result reveals a sparse star field, its faint lights overshadowed by the glare of gas streetlamps, a view that likely left him unsatisfied.

This is the sky Van Gogh saw over the city when he painted the picture

This view represents the sky visible in Arles on September 26, 1888 at 11:15 p.m.

with a North North West orientation

As you can see, the Big Dipper is in the same position as in the painting even though the lowest star is shifted to the right.

Vincent’s Gaze

Van Gogh had decided weeks earlier to paint a starry sky. But when he set out to realize his project, the sky above the city was disappointing: the light from the faint stars was drowned out by that of the gas lamps.

All he had to do was turn his head to the right to find what he was looking for: toward the North, the Big Dipper stood out clearly in the dark sky, with its bright stars arranged in the exact position he would represent.

The solution was right before his eyes.
He therefore painted what he saw to his left, the city and its golden reflections on the Rhône, and what he saw to his right, the constellation, and fused them into a single image.

This view on Google Earth image represents in red the angles inscribed by the landscape of the city and in blue the angle of the celestial landscape

Mischievous Vincent

It is fascinating to note that Van Gogh, with a touch of malice, aligned the stars directly above the gas lamps. This creates a visual illusion suggesting that the long reflections on the Rhône originate from the stars themselves.

Furthermore, the couple in the foreground finds themselves in a darker, reflection-free zone. This corresponds to the shadow of the bridge where there are no bright stars above. By leaving these lovers in the dark, did Vincent want to respect their intimacy? We can also notice that the man wears a yellow hat that strongly reminiscent of the painter’s own self-portraits.

Could this painting contain a hidden self-portrait of the artist strolling with a woman from Arles?

The flower stars

For several months, Van Gogh had been announcing in his letters his intention to paint the starry sky. ^{2 – 5}

When he decided to do it, he had to invent a solution to paint the stars. Indeed, very few other painters had dared to tackle this subject before him and he therefore had to innovate. He painted the painting “Café Terrace at Night” during the first half of September 1888. He decided to represent the stars with small yellow discs that he surrounded with light blue. In “Starry Night Over the Rhone” painted a few days later, his technique had been refined, the discs were surrounded by fine brushstrokes that resembled petals. Their sizes symbolized the brightness of the star. He thus gave each star the appearance of a flower. He applied the same rule when representing the sun which, surrounded by its yellow rays, gave it the appearance of a sunflower. In this painting, we note the frequent use of lemon yellow to represent the “petals”. The blue used for the background of the sky was probably not completely dry, which means that the petals, under the brushstrokes, turn into shades of green.

In the other painting entitled “The Starry Night” painted in Saint Rémy de Provence in 1889, his technique has evolved, the brightness of the stars is symbolized by concentric dotted circles.

Conclusion

The research leads to an inescapable conclusion: The Starry Night Over the Rhône is not a faithful depiction of the scene before Van Gogh that night. Instead, it is a deliberate fusion of two opposing vistas: the southwestern view of the city and its gas lamps, and the northern sky, where the Big Dipper shines.

This was no error or approximation, it was a conscious choice. Van Gogh had no intention of merely replicating reality; he reimagined it to uncover a deeper, emotional truth. By juxtaposing the Big Dipper above the illuminated city, he forged a dialogue between earthly light and the cosmos.

Ultimately, this apparent anomaly reveals the essence of Van Gogh’s vision: a man who observed the world with unmatched intensity, painting en plein air despite discomfort and dim light, and boldly reshaping reality to convey what he felt.

Visionary Van Gogh

Through this unprecedented attitude and this capacity for synthesis,

Vincent Van Gogh challenges the conventions of painting of his time and announces the future evolutions of art, cubism, surrealism, abstraction…

Impression:

Discovering Vincent Van Gogh’s motivations, I felt like I was intruding into the painter’s mind. I felt dizzy as if I could perceive a little better the will and personality of this artist so well-known and yet so mysterious.

Impact and Recognition of this Research

2012: The research findings were shared with the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, where the painting is exhibited, and were officially added to the museum’s documentation archives for the artwork.
2023: The renowned astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Luminet incorporated these research findings into his book “Les nuits étoilées de Vincent Van Gogh” (Editions Seghers).
October 2023: A joint lecture titled “Van Gogh and the Stars” was presented by Jean-Pierre Luminet and Raymond Martinez in a packed theater.
March 2024: Publication of Raymond Martinez’s book, “Sur les Traces de Vincent van Gogh” (On the Trails of Vincent van Gogh), prefaced by historian René Nouailhat, containing the complete analysis.
June 2024: Raymond Martinez was invited by art critic Jean de Loisy to present this research at a conference hosted by the Van Gogh Foundation in Arles during the “Van Gogh and the Stars” exhibition.

Sources :

1 – the painting on Wikipedia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starry_Night_Over_the_Rh%C3%B4ne

2 – Letter to his sister Wilhelmina “I definitely want to paint a starry sky now”: https://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let678/letter.html

3 – letter Theo N°691 : http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let691/print.html

4 – letter Boch : https://eugeneboch.com/letter/

5 – Letter to Émile Bernard “A starry sky, for example, well — it’s a thing that I’d like to try to do…”: https://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let596/letter.html

This research used the Stellarium planetarium : https://stellarium.org/en/