Written in the stars: The mystery of Van Gogh's masterpiece

Elijah Jung Yun Kim (0:01)

You're listening to SBS.

SPEAKER_2 (0:05)

SBS is Australia's most trusted multilingual broadcaster. Our listeners are loyal, highly engaged, and have supported countless local businesses. We offer advertising packages for businesses of all sizes. Our experienced sales team will guide you through the process of owning a great campaign. Bring your own ad or have our production team make you something in one of our 68 languages. Start the conversation with your new audience today.

SPEAKER_3 (0:48)

Look out on a summer's day with eyes that It's one of the world's most famous paintings, and it inspired one of the world's best known songs, Don McLean's Vincent, often known by its opening words, starry, starry night. Now scientists believe they have identified the actual night sky that inspired Vincent van Gogh's masterpiece. Van Gogh's The Starry Night is believed to have been painted in June of 1889 while the Dutch artist was receiving psychiatric treatment in southern France.

Now, a team of South Korean researchers believe the stars point to a different date, around the 22nd of July. The researchers have reconstructed the night sky above Saint-Rémy-du-Provence using astronomical calculations, historical weather records, and letters exchanged between van Gogh and his younger brother, Seo. Their findings suggest the painting may depict stars in the Hyades star cluster in Constellation Taurus rather than Aries, as previously proposed. Lead researcher Elijah Jung Yun Kim says he began investigating because the earlier interpretation did not make sense to him.

Elijah Jung Yun Kim (2:14)

Once I learned that it was the constellation Aries, I felt that something was a bit off.

While Aries is a highly significant constellation, it is composed of rather faint stars. Therefore, it was difficult to accept that an ordinary person, let alone a painter, could have observed it and then depicted it in this way.

SPEAKER_3 (2:36)

Mr. Kim traveled to France and compared the positions of the stars, Venus and the crescent moon with van Gogh's painting.

Elijah Jung Yun Kim (2:46)

So, what we set out to verify in France was whether the constellation Aries would have been high enough in the sky at that time for Vincent van Gogh to have observed it and used it as a reference for his painting. And whether the stars would have been clearly visible enough to do so.

SPEAKER_3 (3:05)

But art critic Tabish Khan says there's no way of knowing for certain.

Tabish Khan (3:11)

I think every artist draws inspiration from what they're seeing around them. And if there was an astronomical phenomena that van Gogh observed, then maybe that worked into his painting. I think it might be an interesting footnote in art history to know that there was that phenomena happening at the time that van Gogh painted it in, may have influenced it. Obviously, he died a long time ago, and there's no way for us to verify that that's what he actually based it on. But it's important to know that artists are always taking inspiration for whatever they see around them. So there's always the possibility that that's what he saw.

SPEAKER_3 (3:46)

More than 80 years after van Gogh painted The Starry Night, American singer-songwriter, Don McLean, found inspiration in the same painting. He wrote Vincent in 1971, after reading about the artist and his brother.

Don McLean (4:03)

I thought, gee, what a great idea to write about. I always loved van Gogh, everybody loves van Gogh, everybody loves van Gogh.

I thought, what a nice idea to write a song about a painter, and tell his story.

SPEAKER_3 (4:17)

McLean, in a documentary for Dutch televisions, NTR, says he wasn't simply trying to describe the painting. He wanted to capture the man behind it.

Don McLean (4:28)

I took his most famous painting, and used the colors and the energy and the forms and everything to try to grab hold of what I perceive to be his essence as a human being.

SPEAKER_3 (4:46)

Van Gogh's life was marked by poverty, rejection and periods of serious mental illness. He had cut off part of his left ear following a confrontation with fellow painter Paul Gauguin, and later voluntarily entered a psychiatric asylum.

During those difficult years, he produced some of his most celebrated works. For McLean, pain was an important part of understanding the artist.

Don McLean (5:27)

Pain is a very important part of art.

People are on drugs today, or they're not prozac, they don't feel anything, so they can't be artists. You got to suffer. You got to suffer and you got to separate yourself from the rest of people, too. You can't be a social guy, you know, going around and being one of the regular guys, because you're not regular.