Printable sheet
Starry Night cypress by Van Gogh, with swirling sky, glowing stars and a sleepy village below. A detailed art printable for all ages; free PDF.
Printable sheet
Free for personal and educational use
Download PDFPrintA tall cypress in the foreground, a sky full of spirals and haloed stars, a crescent moon, rolling hills and a village with a steeple.
Layer dark and light blues in the swirls and use bright yellow for the stars and moon.
Paint the sky outside your own window using swirly strokes.
The Starry Night has been part of the Museum of Modern Art's collection since 1941.
The Starry Night cypress stretches up like a dark flame in one of the world's best-loved paintings. In 1889, Vincent van Gogh was living at an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, in southern France, where he had checked himself in to recover his health. From his bedroom window, he watched the fields and sky before sunrise.
He did not paint the scene outdoors at night. He worked from memory during the day in a studio room he was allowed to use. That is why the painting blends what he saw with what he imagined. The village and its church steeple were not visible from his window in quite that way, and the sky became a whirlwind of swirls, glowing stars and a bright moon.
The cypress tree in front was a favorite subject for Van Gogh, who loved how these tall trees grew all over Provence. Its flickering shape seems to connect earth and sky. Cypresses were also often planted in cemeteries, so many viewers see it as a symbol of life and death.
Van Gogh himself did not think much of this painting, yet today crowds gather in front of it at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His thick, energetic brushstrokes inspired generations of artists to use color and shape to express feelings.
