Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night over the Rhône is an oil on canvas (28-1/2x36-1/4 inches) that is housed in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.
Vincent van Gogh painted Starry Night over the Rhône in 1888. The painting's vivid primary shades create a dramatic sense of contrast.
Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo that despite his rejection of conventional religion, he felt the need for an affirmation of faith, which prompted him to "go out at night into the open and paint the stars." In his first "starry night," he evoked evening's darkness with deep shades of blue, violet, and green, broken by the illumination of the stars with their citron-yellow auras and the lamps on the dock in the distance casting pale yellow reflections across the water.