Starry Night
A summer night at Åsgårdstrand, the Norwegian seaside village where Munch spent his summers — not Van Gogh's painting of the same name.
Åsgårdstrand
The painting depicts a real landscape or cityscape. The precise viewpoint the artist used may be unknown, so the marker shows the general area.
Starry Night — at a glance
- Artist
- Edvard Munch (1863–1944)
- Year
- 1893
- Movement
- Symbolism / proto-Expressionism
- Place
- Åsgårdstrand, on the Oslofjord, Norway
- Viewpoint
- The village shore and linden trees — the shore, trees and Munch's house survive
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- c. 135 × 140 cm
- Now at
- J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Overview
Starry Night is a painting by Edvard Munch of 1893, made in the same period as ‘The Scream’ and part of his ‘Frieze of Life’. It shows a dark blue summer night: the massed forms of trees (a clump of linden trees) in the foreground, a pale fence, the curve of the shore, the fjord, and a sky with a few large stars and their reflection on the water. It is oil on canvas, about 135 by 140 cm, and it hangs in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. It should not be confused with Vincent van Gogh's ‘The Starry Night’ of 1889.
Where was Starry Night painted?
Scholarship Åsgårdstrand is a small resort village on the west side of the Oslofjord, south of Oslo, where Munch spent almost every summer from the late 1880s and eventually bought a small house (now a museum). Its shoreline, the row of linden trees, the white fence and the view across the fjord recur throughout his work. The village retains its wooden houses, the trees and the shore, and Munch's house and garden can be visited; the picture uses that real place as the setting for a mood rather than as a topographic view.
What is in the painting?
The foreground is filled with a dark, almost formless mass — the shadowed linden trees and a bush — against which a light-coloured fence and the curve of the beach stand out. Beyond, the still fjord, a low far shore, and a deep blue sky with several bright stars; a faint whitish shape at the lower right may be a figure or a house corner. Everything is simplified into broad areas of blue and blue-black.
Look closely
The dark clump of trees
A heavy, almost shapeless black mass of linden trees fills the foreground.
The white fence
A pale fence and the curve of the beach stand out against the dark.
The few large stars
A handful of bright stars hang in the deep blue sky and glint on the fjord.
The faint shape at lower right
A whitish form — perhaps a figure, perhaps a corner of a house.
Analysis
Composition and technique
A heavy dark foreground mass against a luminous blue expanse of shore, fjord and star-filled sky.
Scholarship Munch reduces the scene to a few large shapes — the black clump of trees, the pale sweep of shore and fence, the flat fjord, the sky — and lets colour and silhouette carry the feeling. The paint is thin and the forms soft-edged, closer to a coloured drawing than to detailed description.
Meaning and interpretation
Interpretations differ. What the artist documented, what museums and scholars propose, and later or speculative theories are marked and kept separate.
Mood over motif
Like the rest of the Frieze of Life, the picture uses a specific, well-loved place — the Åsgårdstrand shore — to stage an inner state: here a heavy, yearning, faintly melancholy calm rather than the dread of ‘The Scream’. The stars and the dark trees are generally read as an image of longing.
History & provenance
The painting is in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, which acquired it in the 1980s.
Sources
- J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles — collection entry for Edvard Munch, ‘Starry Night’ (1893; oil on canvas, c. 135 × 140 cm)
- Munch's house at Åsgårdstrand (Munchs hus) — Åsgårdstrand and Munch's summers
Frequently asked
Is this Van Gogh's ‘Starry Night’?
No. This is Edvard Munch's ‘Starry Night’ of 1893, set at the Norwegian village of Åsgårdstrand. Vincent van Gogh's famous ‘The Starry Night’ is a separate painting of 1889, in the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Where is Munch's Starry Night set?
At Åsgårdstrand, a small resort village on the Oslofjord south of Oslo, where Munch spent his summers — its shore, its row of linden trees and its white fence recur throughout his work.
Can you visit the place?
Yes. Åsgårdstrand keeps its wooden houses, the trees and the shore, and Munch's own small house and garden there are a museum.
Where is the painting now?
In the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
Related paintings
More by Edvard Munch
