Vincent van Gogh's 'Starry Night Over the Rhone'

I received the product mentioned in exchange for an honest review on my blog. The opinions expressed are 100 percent my own. 

Image: Wikimedia

Vincent van Gogh is one of my favorite artists. I think I favor him because he kept doing what he loves despite others telling him that his work was a joke. My favorite painting of his is Almond Blossom. However, I also like his paintings of the night sky, particularly La nuit étoilée (The Starry Night, or Starry Night Over the Rhône). 

When I visited the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, I had the opportunity to see many of the artist’s paintings, but Starry Night Over the Rhône is at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, France. The interesting thing about this work is that Van Gogh shared his vision of the painting in a letter to friend Eugène Boch. He also described the details of the painting in a letter to his brother Theo. The Musée d'Orsay states that Van Gogh was enthralled with the night sky and wrote about the subject often in letters to friends and family members. 

When I see the stars bursting in Van Gogh’s night sky, it makes me think of looking at the stars on a clear night without my glasses. When I remove my glasses, the clear dots in the sky grow twinkling arms that illuminate the space surrounding each ball of gas with a halo-like effect. I wonder if Van Gogh needed or wore glasses.

Another interesting feature of Starry Night Over the Rhône is the gas lights along the street. Van Gogh worked on the painting while sitting under a gas light, which became the standard in artificial illumination during the artist’s lifetime. The reflections of light in the painting’s water aren’t of the bright stars, but of the lamps that lined the streets.

Starry Night Over the Rhône in My Home

The print that I received

Earlier this year, FramedArt.com got in touch with me to do a review of one of its products using a $75 credit. It offers framed fine art by era, so I immediately looked at the site’s selection of Van Gogh paintings. My husband and I choose Starry Night Over the Rhône. As you see in the link, I chose a black frame with an olive green mat that matches the shades of green in the painting’s water. 

The print itself was about $15 dollars. The bulk of the cost is in the frame and mat. For this piece, I chose the standard glass, a basic frame and a basic mat. It took a few weeks to receive the finished product after I ordered it, but I’m happy with the result.  

What is your favorite Van Gogh painting?


I received the products mentioned in exchange for an unbiased review on my blog.