Road with Cypress and Star
Vincent van Gogh, 1890
Road with Cypress and Star is an oil-on-canvas painting that Vincent van Gogh made in May 1890, during the final weeks of his stay at the asylum of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. It is the last work he produced there before moving to Auvers-sur-Oise. The scene shows two night walkers on a country road beneath a starry sky, while a small cart follows them at some distance. A tall cypress in the centre dominates the composition and divides the canvas into two roughly equal halves.
Van Gogh painted cypresses often in those years. In a letter to his brother Theo he admitted that they constantly occupied his thoughts, and he admired their vertical lines, proportioned somewhat like an Egyptian obelisk. That elongated form, rising almost to the top edge of the canvas, gives the picture a strong upward pull that contrasts with the horizontal sweep of the road.
The painting's symbolism has been read in different ways. The art historian Naomi Maurer suggests that the two halves of the sky, with the evening star on one side and the crescent moon on the other, stand for the old and the new, and that they lend a cosmic dimension to the earthly scene below. In her reading, the cypress separating these two signs might be seen as an obelisk of death. Kathleen Powers Erickson, for her part, connects the work to the painter's belief that his death was near, and notes a possible echo of the Christian allegory The Pilgrim's Progress in the road that runs through the composition.
Whatever the interpretation, the picture reflects the mood of an artist who, though steadier than a year earlier, still struggled with feelings of hopelessness. For many scholars its appeal lies in the blend of direct observation of a night landscape and deep emotional charge, a quality that anticipates the expressive intensity of his final works.
- Painter
- Vincent van Gogh
- Date
- 1890
- Medium
- oil paint, canvas
- Dimensions
- 92 × 73 cm
- Museum
- Kröller-Müller Museum, Ede
- Genre
- Post-impressionism
- Depicts
- road, star
More works by Vincent van Gogh
