Scientists say they have matched the stars in Vincent van Gogh’s masterpiece The Starry Night to the real night sky – and used it to pin down when the painting was made.
Researchers in South Korea compared the Moon, Venus and the Hyades star cluster in the painting with where they would have appeared over Saint-Rémy de Provence in 1889.
They concluded the work was painted on 22 July that year, a month later than is widely believed.
The painting shows the swirling pre-dawn sky over Saint-Rémy de Provence, in the south of France, as seen from Van Gogh’s window at the town’s asylum. He had admitted himself there in May 1889, months after a breakdown in which he cut off part of his ear.
The team, from space-science company SLLAB and Kyung Hee University’s School of Space Research, visited Saint-Rémy to compare the sky Van Gogh painted with the sky as it would have looked in the summer of 1889.
The painting is usually dated to June 1889, with 18 June often cited. But on that date the Moon would have been waning gibbous – more than half illuminated – rather than the thin crescent Van Gogh painted.
Other evidence, including weather reports, supported their findings, the team said.
“I hope this work prompts a renewed, multidisciplinary look at the sequence and working methods of the Saint-Rémy paintings, and at Van Gogh’s movements that summer,” said Elijah Jeong-hyun Kim, lead author of the study, published in Scientific Reports.
However, experts at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam are not convinced, saying the sky in the painting came from the artist’s imagination.
“Van Gogh was not concerned with exact likenesses,” said Teio Meedendorp, a researcher at the museum.
“He did not paint The Starry Night from life, but from his imagination and with the aid of other paintings and drawings. The positions of the celestial bodies depicted can therefore not form a reliable basis for dating the work.”
Mr Meedendorp also said Van Gogh had a mental breakdown around 22 July 1889 and would have been unable to paint for a month afterwards.
The Starry Night is currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
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