Van Gogh's Starry Night and the Hyades
Elijah Jeong-hyun Kim, a doctoral student at the Kyung Hee University Space Research School, claims that the star cluster in Vincent Van Gogh's The Starry Night corresponds to the Hyades in the constellation of Taurus, not Aries as previously thought. Kim, who spent 40 years observing stars, argues that the painting deserved a detailed astronomical study.Previous interpretations of the painting
Previously, it was believed that Van Gogh imagined the constellations in his paintings, with only The Starry Night on the Rhône considered a real representation of the sky. However, art historian Albert Boime suggested in the 1980s that The Starry Night depicted a real sky. He and Van Gogh specialist Jan Hulsker dated the painting to around June 19, 1889, based on a letter Van Gogh wrote on June 18.Challenging the previous dating
Kim disputes the June 19 dating, noting that the painting shows a crescent moon, but astronomical data suggest a waning gibbous moon around that date. A waning gibbous moon would have more than half of its surface visible, which contradicts the crescent depicted in the painting. This discrepancy leads Kim to question the accuracy of the previous dating.Disputing the Aries interpretation
Charles Whitney previously suggested that the star cluster in The Starry Night represented the constellation of Aries. Kim, however, argues that the stars of Aries are too dim to be visible to the naked eye. In a letter from late May to early June 1889, Van Gogh mentioned observing the countryside before sunrise with only the morning star as light. Kim notes that the constellation of Aries would have been above Venus at that time but not visible to the naked eye.Using observational geometry
To support his claims, Kim used observational geometry, a technique that determines the painter's location, the direction he was looking, and the part of the sky revealed. Researchers used the position and phases of the Moon to rule out June as a possible date. They suggest the Hyades, which rise in the east at the same time as Venus, around July 22.Confirming the painting's location
Preliminary sketches and field studies helped locate the exact position where Van Gogh created the preparatory drawing for The Starry Night. When a photograph taken from that location was overlaid on the drawing, the contours matched perfectly. From there, the team reconstructed the painter's field of view, and the Moon, Venus, and the Hyades of July 22 fit into it in a very similar arrangement.Van Gogh's mental state
Kim emphasizes that identifying the date of the painted sky was not the main goal. The study aimed to understand how the celestial bodies ended up in the painter's field of view and whether Van Gogh was in a mental crisis at the time. Historical records indicate that Van Gogh experienced several severe mental crises during his stay at the Saint-Rémy asylum, likely due to bipolar disorder.Correspondence and meteorological data
Van Gogh's correspondence and that of his close ones provide evidence for a crisis occurring in late July. In a letter dated August 4, his brother Theo reported that the crisis had lasted "a few days." If the crisis had begun in mid-July, it would have been difficult to state so early in August. Meteorological data confirm a strong mistral from July 27 to 29, aligning with Van Gogh's account of a windy day when he was painting in the fields.Testing the method on other works
Kim's method has been tested on other paintings, with successful results. Van Gogh's works from 1888, such as The Starry Night on the Rhône and Night Café Terrace, correspond well to the real sky. The method was also applied to Millet's The Starry Night, confirming a correspondence, while Elsheimer's Flight into Egypt gave no results. This means the method can distinguish between paintings that correspond to a real sky and those that do not.
