But most visitors were gathered around one explosively colorful painting in swirling shades of light and dark blue, bottle green, and pale gold.
One of the most famous paintings in the world.
These were the early days of my research about a little-known woman who is key to shedding light on three inevitable questions when it comes to Vincent van Gogh. Why did he cut off his ear? Why did he commit suicide? And how, after dying in obscurity, did he eventually become regarded as one of the world’s greatest artists?
I, for one, could remember, as a child, first seeing The Starry Night reprinted in one of my parents’ art history books. It was my modern art “aha” moment. No one was standing over my shoulder telling me to pay it special attention, but I was mesmerized. The painting became imprinted on my young imagination, and I never forgot it.
A man from Southern California named Paul Duelo was laughing. “I know this painting, and I don’t know anything about art,” he said with a chuckle, nodding at the crowd standing around The Starry Night. “Look at everyone!”
“It’s overwhelming,” Larison whispered, with tears in her eyes. “It evokes something. It’s magical.”
Van Gogh painted The Starry Night in June of 1889 during a year he spent in a mental asylum in the south of France.
Hanging just to the left of The Starry Night was a Paul Gauguin’s painting, The Moon and the Earth. The juxtaposition provoked a curious thought. Gauguin and Van Gogh lived and worked together in Vincent’s yellow house in Arles in the south of France for several weeks. What would the hot-tempered, competitive Gauguin have thought seeing so many people gathered around Vincent’s painting at this moment while his was comparatively ignored? And what would Vincent have made of all the attention given to The Starry Night?
"The Starry Night" by Vincent van Gogh at the the Museum of Modern Art in New York. —Victor Fraile—Corbis/Getty Images
The fine art of family matters
But, as I was learning, family matters also very likely played a part in the most notorious instance of self-harm in art history.
Jo was married to Vincent’s younger brother, Theo, who was an art dealer in Paris and Vincent’s only source of income. Theo supported Vincent with a monthly allowance, and in exchange Vincent gave Theo his paintings to try to market and sell. The financial arrangement, as it would in most families, put an emotional strain on both brothers. Theo was not rich, and Vincent constantly complained about being broke, with not even enough money for food, and often practically begged his brother for more money.
In July of 1890, believing himself a failure as an artist and a man, Vincent shot himself in the chest. He was only 37.
They filled the walls of their Paris apartment, were stored in closets, under beds, and at a nearby art supply store. The Potato Eaters, Irises, Sunflowers, self-portraits, and The Starry Night. Celebrated as masterpieces today, at the time they were regarded as the unpolished works of a depressed, crazy man and commercially worthless. Jo thought differently. She had no formal art training, but she loved his work and her instincts told her that Vincent was (as Theo had come to believe) a genius.
An infamous ear
As much as she would play a vital role in propelling him to fame, Jo was also someone who unwittingly played a part in Vincent’s self-destructive descent, something she at times admitted feeling guilt about after his death. Jo understood Vincent was lonely and that he became more isolated after she married his brother.
And Vincent shot himself just days after a stressful visit with Jo and Theo in Paris. Theo was thinking about quitting his job to start his own business, which meant, for a time, no income. The couple (who by now had a baby son they named after Vincent) hoped to rent a better apartment on a lower floor. But budgets were tight, arguments ensued, and Vincent eventually rushed out of the apartment, unable to shake the thought that he was a burden that Theo would or could no longer bear.
Interestingly, of all the paintings Jo inherited, no one—not Jo or Theo or Vincent—considered The Starry Night one of Vincent’s best. Vincent didn’t even sign it. Research recently published by the Van Gogh Museum points out that Vincent signed only about 16% of his paintings, hypothesizing he did so usually when he was completely satisfied or wanted to make them a gift to friends or family. In the brothers’ correspondence, The Starry Night was referred to rather than named. Theo called it simply “the village in the moonlight,” critically writing to Vincent that “I feel that the search for style takes away the real sentiment of things.”
Jo also didn’t seem to consider The Starry Night as especially important. She sold it early on but reacquired it briefly in time for a major exhibition she organized in Amsterdam in 1905. It was painting number 199, called De Sterren (The Stars), and it changed hands two more times before MoMA acquired it in 1941. By then, it had been rechristened The Starry Night. The name stuck.
Paul Duelo, the man from California I met while admiring MoMA’s The Starry Night, lit up when I told him about Jo van Gogh-Bonger.
But he wanted to know more.
If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental-health crisis or contemplating suicide, call or text 988.
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