Starry Night

Jean-François Millet is best known for his monumental paintings of rural imagery. In 1849 he moved to Barbizon, southwest of Paris, where he joined a colony of artists who worked from nature. Starry Night, one of Millet’s most dramatic and innovative nocturnal landscapes, was painted shortly afterward but was probably retouched some fifteen years later. The artist employed loose brushstrokes to paint the shooting stars that brighten the sky but only partly light a path in the countryside. A solitary cart is silhouetted on the horizon against the silvery light of nightfall. In a letter to his brother, Millet wrote, “If only you knew how beautiful the night is . . . the calm and grandeur of it are so awesome that I find that I actually feel overwhelmed.”