Day 63 - The Starry Night

The Starry Night | Vincent van Gogh, 1889, Oil on canvas, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Just before Christmas I read a very good reflection which mentioned the life of Vincent van Gogh. It intrigued me and I decided that I wanted to learn more about this enigmatic painter. So I Googled a good biography, and was amazed when my local library found it and put in on reservation for me. When I arrived to pick it up I was staggered – literally – to discover it came in at a whopping 976 pages long! I’ve not quite finished it yet.

Vincent van Gogh was the son of a Dutch Reformed pastor. When he was a young man, he spent three years in England, the last six months living and teaching at a boys’ school in Isleworth. While there he also became closely involved with the Congregational Church in Chiswick. Vincent van Gogh felt a need for religion all his life, something infinite, something that a person could believe in. He did not always have the words to express it. So he painted instead.

One of his most well known paintings is The Starry Night. It was painted in June 1889, from his room at the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence where he had committed himself following the breakdown that ended his friendship with Gauguin. In that place of great despair he produced one of the most radiant visions of the cosmos ever committed to canvas.

The sky churns and breathes. Stars are not simply bright; they pulse and radiate, surrounded by halos of golden light. The moon burns. Eleven swirling galaxies of blue and white spiral across the scene, as though the whole sky is alive and moving. Far below, a village sleeps in quiet darkness — all except the lit windows of houses, and, rising above them, a church spire that points directly upward into that wild, wheeling sky.

Victoria Emily Jones says in a blog on Vincent van Gogh: “While some interpret the agitated brushstrokes of his later paintings as evidence of internal turmoil and instability, might they not instead express his view of the universe as vibrant, wild, pulsating with life and energy?”

It is interesting to note in the details of the village in The Starry Night, the only building that is dark is the church. Is Vincent Van Gogh revealing his inner pain here? Is the institutional church dead and lifeless? Is this the conclusion that this once fervently religious man came to, son of a stern pastor, rejected by seminary and ministry. The church had not shown him grace, and so he went looking elsewhere? Is he stating that mystery, wonder and spirituality are to be found in nature?

When we are still before God we may find ourselves, on some days, with nothing coherent to offer — no tidy prayer, no organised thought. Just the ache. Just the swirling. And perhaps that is enough. Perhaps the One who flung those actual stars across that actual sky is not put off by the inarticulate, paint-stained reaching of one of his children.

"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands." — Psalm 19:1

Take a moment. Look up, or look inward. Bring what you have — even if what you have is only longing – and give it thankfully to God.

Neil Chappell