Van Gogh's 'The Starry Night' was based on a specific celestial arrangement observed on July 22, 1889.

Scientists have determined that Vincent van Gogh’s masterpiece The Starry Night depicts a real sky observed on July 22, 1889. For decades, art historians and viewers regarded the painting primarily as an imaginative expression, created in mid-June 1889 while the artist stayed at…

The actual sky of Van Gogh’s Starry Night: a multidisciplinary reconstruction The painter’s narrow frame, recovered from an earlier sketch of the same terrain, is then applied to the 1889 sky. At dawn around 22 July 1889, the waning-crescent Moon, Venus, and the Hyades cluster gather within that narrow frame, while the asterism’s geometry, contemporary weather records, and the letters independently converge on the same date. These findings suggest that the night sky in The Starry Night originated from observation of a specific celestial arrangement, and call for reconsidering the June dating. This framework can extend to historical night paintings as a reproducible scientific art history. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-73025-5

Van Gogh's 'The Starry Night' depicts the sky on July 22, 1889, researchers find https://www.space.com/astronomy/van-goghs-the-starry-night-depicts-the-sky-on-july-22-1889-researchers-find