Very few night skies seen from the south of France during the summer of 1889 would match the scene on van Gogh’s canvas. A new study argues that it could have been July 22

October 23, 2026 4:41 p.m.

The Starry Night , Vincent Van Gogh, 1889 Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

On a clear summer night in 1889, Vincent van Gogh gazed through his asylum window at the bright pre-dawn sky above Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France.

Something about the scene moved the 36-year-old, who was recovering from several mental health crises . In one letter from around early June, he wrote to his brother, Theo: “This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big.” In mid-June, he wrote to his brother that he had completed “a new study of a starry sky.”

For years, art historians have used these letters and other documentary clues to date the painting of one van Gogh’s masterpieces, The Starry Night , to June 1889.…