New scientific research on Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night revealed an unexpected connection between the famous painting and the laws of physics. A team of researchers specializing in marine sciences and fluid dynamics analyzed Van Gogh’s distinctive brushstrokes to learn more about how the artist observed and interpreted the world around him.
The Surprising Science of The Starry Night
Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night (1889) is a pioneering Post-Impressionist painting. While its imaginative landscape, dynamic brushstrokes, and emotional coloration did not garner much attention during the artist’s lifetime, The Starry Night has since become one of the most recognizable paintings in all of art history. Recently, a team of physicists analyzed the painting and discovered it is surprisingly more scientifically accurate than previously assumed. They found Van Gogh’s expressive swirls in the sky actually adhere to the laws of physics—specifically, the science of turbulent airflow.
According to Yongxiang Huang of Xiamen University in China, The Starry Night “reveals a deep and intuitive understanding of natural phenomena. Van Gogh’s precise representation of turbulence might be from studying the movement of clouds and the atmosphere or an innate sense of how to capture the dynamism of the sky.”
Did Van Gogh Understand the Laws of Physics?
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Sign up to our Free Weekly NewsletterThe research team used high-resolution digital images of The Starry Night to analyze the painting’s 14 main swirls, or eddies. They hoped to better understand The Starry Night‘s atmospheric motion on a more scientific level. To do this, they gathered statistics, measuring the brushstrokes and comparing the sizes of the eddies to the scales predicted by scientific turbulence theories. To analyze the movement of Vincent van Gogh‘s starry night sky, the team also looked at the relative brightness of paint colors.
It turns out that the sizes of the 14 eddies in The Starry Night, along with their relative intensity and distance, adhere to Kolmogorov’s theory of turbulence, which predicts atmospheric movement. Huang noted that Van Gogh would not have been aware of the exact science but that the artist did spend long hours observing turbulence in nature. He said, “I think this physical relationship must be embedded in his mind so that’s why when he made this famous Starry Night painting, it mimics the real flow.”
The Story of The Starry Night
Vincent van Gogh famously spent twelve months at an asylum in Saint-Rémy, France, where he sought mental health treatment. During his stay, sometime in mid-June, he painted The Starry Night. A creative amalgam of actual views from the asylum, the painting has primarily been understood as an expressive exploration of Van Gogh’s turbulent mental state. Rather than relying on pure observation, Van Gogh imbued his emotions into the painting’s vivid colors and tactile brushstrokes, which are strikingly modern.
This new study isn’t the first time the swirling brushstrokes in The Starry Night have been a topic of scientific discussion. Earlier this year, NASA’s Juno probe captured new photographs of Jupiter that show storm swirls on the planet’s northern hemisphere that resemble Van Gogh’s swirling brushstrokes in The Starry Night. In 2021, a team of microbiologists noted a similarity between the painting’s swirls and colonies of mutated bacteria. Additionally, a new species of peacock spider—whose body bears an uncanny resemblance to Van Gogh’s luminous night sky—was named after the painting in 2020.
