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I think it's hard to separate any Van Gogh painting

from Van Gogh's life.

It's very hard to look at this painting

without thinking of the misery he must have gone through.

Also it's a painting that leaves me in awe,

because it is a work that was produced in complete isolation.

I think that's why it's become so famous.

Vincent van Gogh's world was quiet,

but in his mind the sky was alive,

swirling, radiating from nature.

Van Gogh is an artist who loves to work from nature.

The key to this painting

is that it's a link with nature,

it's a spiritual link with nature.

One night, a view before him was simple:

a quiet village under a vast dark sky,

but Van Gogh didn't paint what he saw - he painted what he felt.

I also think it's a very uplifting painting.

A painting which eventually will really change the course of art

and influence so many of the up-and-coming artists.

In a matter of hours, he would create

one of the most enduring images in the history of art.

He called it The Starry Night.

This particular painting

was made not long after he had been admitted

to an asylum near Saint-Remy,

and I suppose we're all familiar

with the famous episode

where he chops off part of his own ear

after a particularly violent

or particularly dramatic quarrel with Gauguin.

While Van Gogh was living in the South of France

with fellow painter Paul Gauguin,

their relationship quickly grew strained.

Following a final argument in December 1888,

Van Gogh suffered a severe episode

and famously cut off part of his ear.

Soon after, he was admitted to an asylum in Saint-Remy,

but although this period is often viewed as the peak of his suffering,

Van Gogh's life wasn't as endlessly troubled as many believe.

First of all, I'd like to say that it's a myth

that Van Gogh was ill most of his adult life.

He didn't have his first serious episode

until Christmas of 1888

and he was 35 by then, and he's going to die two years later,

so he wasn't ill or sick his entire life.

Having said that, the last 18 months of his life,

he spent 12 months of those in an asylum.

But Van Gogh's time in the asylum was incredibly productive,

arguably one of the most fruitful periods of his career.

During his year-long stay, he created some of his most iconic works,

including The Starry Night.

This was made during a period when he was well.

This was made in June.

In July he has a breakdown,

but in June he's lucid, he's fine,

and when he works hard, he's incredibly focused and intense.

So I think we need to remember that in the asylum

he painted 150 paintings.

He worked hard while he was in the asylum.

In between all of these crises,

he was completely lucid,

and it's in those moments that he paints these great masterpieces,

including Starry Night.

Yes, it was painted at a time

after a difficult psychological trauma,

but I think, in many ways,

when he arrives in Saint-Remy,

there's this sense that he's being taken care of.

Because he created Starry Night despite his mental illness,

not because of it,

and that's a really important thing to talk about with Van Gogh.

Many assume The Starry Night reflects Van Gogh's mental turmoil,

yet it's not simply a portrayal of his struggles.

While Van Gogh did battle with his mental health,

the painting is more an expression of his fascination with the night sky,

his desire to find peace

and his deep connection with nature.

The thing about Van Gogh is, he came to painting very late in his life,

so he grew up under Realism.

So, you know, the movement was Realism,

realistic artwork.

Then you've got the Impressionists, who shocked the world.

Everyone hated Impressionism, first of all

and then they're just getting used to Impressionism

and then post-Impressionism comes along, with someone like Van Gogh,

and really shakes things up.

I think we have to consider when Van Gogh was painting this

and remind ourselves that he had just spent

an incredibly productive

although also, in the end, dramatic - period

working with Gauguin.

Paul Gauguin was one of the first artists

to abandon traditional Western artistic inventions

and embrace a more symbolic, bold style.

Van Gogh greatly admired Gauguin's work and approach to art

and his influence on Van Gogh was significant,

especially during their time together in France.

Though their partnership was short-lived,

Gauguin encouraged Van Gogh

to push beyond realistic depictions of the world

and experiment with colour and form,

especially with nature.

Van Gogh is an artist who loves to work from nature,

but if you put this painting

against or alongside other landscapes

that were made at the same time by different artists,

it's just a completely different world.

It's just a completely different style

and, in a way, this is a response to what Gauguin is telling him to do.

Gauguin says, "Try and get away from nature

and try and represent more of an idea,

something that is more... abstract."

So I think you're moving from a whole area of Realism,

and perhaps beautiful work,

to something that's much more inner,

much more about the artists themselves

and about feelings...

...and the work becomes much more abstract, as well.

And this is something that Van Gogh struggles with,

but you get a sense that this painting is a response

to what Gauguin is trying to tell him to do -

try and get away from a visual,

mimetic representation of nature

and do something that is more... more erm...

almost visionary.

Van Gogh saw things that we don't see,

and I think this painting is a great example of that.

He wrote about seeing the world

in a much more vivid and exaggerated way,

describing how he felt as though he could almost hear the colours

or see them moving,

allowing him to communicate his inner world

in ways few artists had before.

It's one of a few paintings

that the only way you can really experience it

is to be standing in front of it.

A reproduction never does it justification.

You really have to see these paintings in the flesh.

They are living, breathing works of art

and they almost sort of stand away from the canvas or the support.

They are so... so almost three-dimensional, in part.

The brushwork in this painting is quite extreme, really.

He's using a technique known as impasto,

where he's actually building up the surface of the paint.

And that's because you can see the brushworks.

You can see the swirling brushworks,

which are these big, huge, long strokes.

You can see the short, stabbing brushwork

and you can see how the brushwork radiates from each star,

and that's really important with Van Gogh,

because that's what gives it movement.

And you can see, when you see it in real life,

that Van Gogh is stabbing at the canvas.

But when you look at the way he's applying brushwork,

it's very careful.

Yes, it's built up, but it's very careful.

It's very controlled. It's in no way frenzied.

I think it's much more about control, I would say,

than any sort of explosion of inner psyche.

I think you would read it in quite a different way

to what we're sometimes accustomed to do.

Van Gogh carved his own path.

He was moving beyond the confines of Impressionism.

Rather than faithfully reproducing what he saw,

he used colour and form freely,

guided not by reality,

but by emotion,

to express something deeper and more personal.

Some people will say

that it's a representation of Van Gogh's mental troubles.

I would say completely the opposite.

He was an intelligent man. He was very empathetic

and he spoke four languages.

He was super-intelligent,

so there's so many myths about Van Gogh that we need to dispel.

So despite the extraordinary swirls in the sky

and the sort of explosions of colour

and bright, non-naturalistic colour,

which certainly border on the abstract,

this is a painting that is, nevertheless,

still harnessed in reality.

It's a sort of hybrid, you might say,

between the... nature

and a manifestation of the abstract, as well.

Van Gogh's The Starry Night isn't just a painting.

It's a window into his visionary mind.

He was fascinated by the night sky...

...and he once wrote to his brother Theo,

"I have nature and art and poetry,

and if that is not enough,

what is enough?"

It's quite rare that we get to experience a big sky

and the power of the night sky...

...and those moments that we've spent outdoors,

enjoying and wondering at the night sky,

you get the sense of being transported back to Van Gogh's day,

when he was doing something exactly the same.

But what many people don't realise

is that Starry Night was painted from memory,

not directly from his studio window.

I think what we have to understand is, this is not a real view.

This is not the view that Van Gogh saw...

...and that's the difference between the Impressionists

and the Post-Impressionists.

The Impressionists were not painting "en plein air", painting outside.

He had a studio in the asylum.

He was lucky enough to have a studio in the asylum.

The studio was facing in a different direction from his bedroom,

so this is an amalgamation of those two views.

So first of all, you're looking at the town.

It is the village of Saint-Remy,

although he can't actually see the village from his bedroom.

The image of Saint-Remy

is taken from a sketch that he makes at another time.

And the town, in real life, is much, much bigger.

The church, for example, has a dome in real life

and then the mountains are the view from his studio,

so you're looking at two different views.

Van Gogh combined multiple perspectives

to create the iconic scene.

Even the night sky is partially based on real astronomy,

such as the bright star - likely Venus -

which was transformed by Van Gogh's imagination

into a dynamic landscape.

And then he's applying this paint

and when he applies this paint,

he's applying it straight from the tube.

You know, these are the colours of the tube. He's not mixing them.

So something that is quite tangible

and something that is, as I say, very visionary and very abstract.

It's almost like he doesn't know what to do with the paint.

He's applying with a palette knife,

and so you get these huge swathes of colour,

and then the village is much, much calmer,

so how do we interpret this?

There's many, many ways of interpreting this painting.

His studio at the asylum

became a rare sanctuary of peace and purpose for him.

Painting served as a form of therapy,

an outlet when words fell short.

But what did The Starry Night truly mean to him?

Perhaps the answer lies in one of the heartfelt letters

he wrote to his brother Theo.

In one of his many letters to his brother, he said,

"When I have a need of, shall I say, religion,

I go out and I paint the stars."

Van Gogh wrote these words in a letter

that was part of a lifelong correspondence

with his younger brother Theo.

Theo wasn't just family.

He was Vincent's emotional anchor

and the first person to believe in his genius.

Over the course of their lives,

the brothers exchanged nearly 900 letters,

many of them filled with vulnerability, doubt and hope.

In one such letter,

Van Gogh included a sketch

that would evolve into The Starry Night.

Yet despite its now iconic status,

Van Gogh himself wasn't convinced of its worth.

He called the painting a "failure",

writing that he felt the stars were "exaggerated"

and that the scenes "strayed too far from nature".

He was uncertain whether the emotional intensity

translated into something meaningful or merely chaotic.

So when Van Gogh wrote of needing religion

and choosing, instead, to paint the stars,

he wasn't being poetic for poetry's sake.

He was describing the very act of reaching for religion

in the only way he knew how:

with colour, with movement

and with the pull of the night sky.

We can look at this painting as a form of religion.

So Van Gogh, when he was younger,

was very, very religious.

His father was a pastor and Van Gogh even became a missionary,

but then, later on, as he got older, he gave up religion

and he saw it more spiritually.

He saw the spirituality was in the stars, the skies and the landscape

and we can see this as a spiritual painting.

Van Gogh's spirituality was deep and ever-evolving,

beginning with a desire to become a pastor,

like his father.

In his early 20s, he worked as a missionary

in a poor Belgian mining town.

Over time, he drifted away from organised religion,

yet maintained a profound spiritual connection

with nature, art and humanity.

He came to see painting as a sacred act

and believed beauty could be found in everyday life.

The night sky in particular held special meaning for him.

He often viewed it as a symbol

for the infinite and the divine,

reflecting his belief that something greater existed

beyond what could be seen.

I think the most interesting thing about his paintwork in this

is the way he has taken this cypress tree

and the cypress tree, I think, is really important in this painting,

because it links heaven and earth.

We know for a fact that he couldn't see a cypress tree like that

from his room or from his studio.

They were much further away, in the distance,

so what he's done is, he's used the cypress tree,

which, by the way, in Mediterranean culture represents death,

and he's used it to link those two areas of the painting.

And we have to remember that Van Gogh loved nature.

So many of his paintings are of nature and the joy of nature.

I do think a key to this painting

is that it's a link with nature.

It's a spiritual link with nature

and that's what Van Gogh is looking for.

He's looking for some kind of spirituality,

even though he no longer believes in God himself, or religion, in any way.

Vincent van Gogh would die in July 1890.

It marked the tragic end of a life

defined by emotional turmoil, raw brilliance

and a relentless pursuit of meaning through art.

At just 37, he suffered a gunshot wound to the chest,

long believed to be self-inflicted,

while he was out painting...

...yet modern scholars have raised doubts,

suggesting the wound may have been accidental,

or even the result of a confrontation with the locals.

Whatever the truth,

Van Gogh succumbed to his injuries two days later

in the quiet presence of his beloved brother Theo.

In one of his final whispered phrases, he said,

"La tristesse durera toujours" -

"The sadness will last for ever."

He died virtually unknown,

having sold only one painting during his lifetime.

The world had not yet caught up to the depth of his vision.

After both Vincent and Theo died within a year of each other,

it was Theo's widow,

Johanna van Gogh-Bonger,

who championed Vincent's legacy.

She preserved his letters, exhibited his work

and opened the eyes of the world

to a man they had overlooked.

Over time, Van Gogh's bold colours,

impassioned brushwork and aching vulnerability

would inspire artistic movements

and ignite the imagination of generations.

At £22,500,000

for the last time...

Today,

millions stand in awe

before that storm of stars and swirling sky.

The world finally understood

what he had poured into his canvas:

the longing, the chaos, the beauty and the hope -

The Starry Night.

I find the painting incredibly joyful.

I find the painting - I think, like many -

uplifting and optimistic.

It's almost a homage to nature

and when you know how much Van Gogh loved nature,

I think that makes this even more pertinent

and even more poignant.

But I think it also reminds us of the power of nature.

So many of us now today live in towns and cities

and it's quite rare that we get to experience a big sky

and the power of the night sky.

I think it's hard to separate any Van Gogh painting

from Van Gogh's life

and I think it's very hard to look at this painting

without thinking of the misery he must have gone through.

On the other hand, I also think it's a very uplifting painting

and I think there's something about the movement and the action

and, stylistically, I think it's one of his best paintings

and I think that's why it's become so famous.

The Starry Night is more than a masterpiece.

It's a moment of perspective.

Van Gogh captured a tension we all know -

the stillness of night and the restless movement of the mind.

Also, it's a painting that leaves me in awe,

because it is a work that was produced in complete isolation...

...and yet, in complete isolation,

Van Gogh develops an artistic language by himself,

which will single-handedly change the course of art.

As we leave his painted night behind,

we're reminded how art can connect us

not just to the artist, but to something larger.

So, next time you find yourself under a starry night,

pause, look up

and see the world a little differently.

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