The houses of the village are small blocks of greens oranges and yellows with a hint of red towards the left of the church For the sky the brushstrokes swirl and each dab of color rolling with the clouds around the stars and moon on the tree they bend with the curve of the branches The hills roll down into the village below and the trees soften the inflexibility of the town None of the scenery depicts the asylum surroundings it entirely derived from Van Gogh s imagination The contrast in styles plays on the natural versus the unnatural dreams versus reality The most prominent shapes are of the circular motion in which the stars and the clouds are portrayed The main sources of light are the luminous stars and moon Patterns of luminance in Starry Night are coincidental but it seems more probable that Van Gogh was gifted with a profound intuitive feeling for turbulence and that this is reflected in his paintings Lynch It is obvious that the artist had a passion for night life as the painting shows a silent village resting underneath a dominant sky The darkness is reflected in the village at the bottom half of the painting It represents how gloomy the world looks as compared to the bright night sky The perpendicular lines in the cypress tree and church tower gently disintegrate the structure without withdrawing from the influential night time atmosphere Eugene Delacroix painted Liberty Leading the People in 1830 Fig 12 8 pg 338
This work commemorates the July Revolution of 1830 which overthrew King Charles X of France and brought his cousin Louis Philip I to power This canvas was defined as the first political work of modern painting I have undertaken a modern subject a barricade so that if I did not win for my country I will at least be painting for it wrote Eugene Delacroix on the 18th of that month to his brother the general in an unpublished letter Delacroix With the outstretched figure of liberty the vibrant bold fighters contrasting to the dead casualties in the foreground the heroic poses of the people fighting for liberty The scene combines realism with allegory conveying hidden meaning through symbol or metaphor A female personification of Liberty strides forward through the chaos summoning the fighting force behind her Delacroix utilizes Romanticism in his painting and war is the vehicle for Romanticism as it combines terror violence and heroism The work of art communicates feelings of grandeur intensity and greatness Van Gogh communicated from the painting that night time is not just about darkness it can sometimes be so illuminating and can contain a ray of hope which leaves the worldly things looking dark and dull in its comparison
The painting also contains a link between life and death which is present there due to the artist s ill health and his knowledge about death being inevitable Delacroix s art work changed the art world forever Many artists that came after him felt his influence in their work Though it was his one and only political work it taught many artists about the techniques to apply differing neoclassicism to romanticism Works Cited Gardner Helen and Fred S Kleiner Gardner s Art through the Ages A Concise Global History Wadsworth Cengage Learning 2013 Delacroix Eugene Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacriox 2010 http www eugene delacroix com liberty leading the people jsp Lynch Peter Energy cascades in Van Gogh s Starry Night 21 December 2017 https www irishtimes com news science energy cascades in van gogh s starry night 1 3335001 MoMa Learning Vincent van Gogh Emotion Vision and A Singular Style n d https www moma org learn moma_learning vincent van gogh the starry night 1889
