Why Vincent van Gogh considered his 1889 masterpiece to be a failure
Any discussion on the most famous paintings in art has to cover the Mona Lisa, The Scream, and Girl with a Pearl Earring. That one with the dogs playing poker. Then you have about five options from the work of Vincent van Gogh.
Van Gogh is among the most revered painters for a damn good reason. With Sunflowers, Self-Portrait with a Bandaged Ear, Bedroom in Arles, he took everyday images and, with his use of colour and perspective, made them utterly unforgettable. However, those paintings came from what he could do with fairly basic inspiration. It stands to reason that, when given a view as breathtaking as the night sky of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence just before sunrise, he made one of the most enduring images in the history of Western art.
The Starry Night is a painting that’s almost impossible to talk about in the big 2026. There’s as much new to say about it as there is for ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, or Citizen Kane, or Abbey Road. It’s quite simply a peak of its medium, regardless of what you personally think about it. You want to talk about the craft of it? The fact that it’s actually got no black paint on it at all has been done to death. You want to talk about the beauty of it? Everything from the way the yellow almost appears golden in the moon yet dissipates into the night sky is now base-level analysis.
Just because it’s correct doesn’t make it any less done to death.
If it were any other painter, you would think you’d view it as your crowning achievement, yet that isn’t the case here. After all, find me one artist who thinks that their most celebrated work is also their best. The aforementioned works of art were none of their creator’s favourites of their own work, and The Starry Night is no different. In fact, we have reason to believe that the feelings van Gogh had for his own masterpiece went way beyond ambivalence.
Van Gogh was a prolific letter writer and not one to mince words. One of the people he spent the most time in contact with was his brother Theo, to whom Vincent talked disparagingly not only about The Starry Night, but the entire triptych it came from. The Starry Night, however, got the most fierce criticism from its own creator, most notably because he felt like the piece was something of a rip-off.
In a letter to Theo, Vincent said, “I once or twice allowed myself to be led astray into abstraction, as you know… But that was delusion, dear friend, and one soon comes up against a brick wall… And yet, once again I allowed myself to be led astray into reaching for stars that are too big – another failure, and I have had my fill of that”.
That’s right, Vincent van Gogh, of all people, thought that one of the most celebrated paintings in the Western canon was a crass bit of trend-chasing.
Perhaps he was covering something else up, because after all, the view that inspired The Starry Night was from the window of a psychiatric hospital he was staying in, so it would stand to reason that the painting reminded him of a bad time in his life… However, van Gogh confided in Theo about pretty much everything. If he felt that way, he absolutely would have told him straight rather than try to cover anything up.
So if you feel like the piece of art you’re working on is a little derivative, whatever it may be, remember that so did the creator of one of the most celebrated paintings of all time.