'The Starry Night', painted in 1889, was very likely inspired by the sky as seen by Vincent
van Gogh (1853-1890) from his window in Saint
Rémy in 1889. His work was described in terms of celestial objects he could have contemplated like the
constellation Aries, Venus and the
moon. Modern astronomers are struck by the prominent spiral structure, and of course the artist could not have
seen this himself in the sky.
It is known that van Gogh took an interest in astronomy, and it is quite plausible that he was aware of the existence
of 'spiral nebulae' from French popular astronomy publications in the 1880s like Camille Flammarion and the magazine
l'Astronomie. 'Spiral nebulae' became particularly popular after the discovery of (super)nova 1885 in Andromeda
(Messier 31), which was regarded as a proof of the Kant-Laplace nebular hypothesis, with a new solar system in
the process of condensation from the nebula, generating a star in the midst of rotating nebulous matter. Van Gogh
may well have seen photographs such as that of the Andromeda Nebula by Isaac Roberts in 1888. This spiral structure
van Gogh added consciously or subconsciously to his own view of the sky.