Why it matters
Van Gogh painted this house in Auvers-sur-Oise on 16 June 1890, six weeks before his death. According to the Hermitage it expresses his great psychological tension: two windows have alarming red splashes and a star hangs over the roof.
Did you know?
- Astronomers identified the star as Venus, which suggests he painted it around 8 pm.
- It disappeared into the secret collection of the German industrialist Otto Krebs in the late 1920s.
- After the war it lay hidden in the Hermitage archives for fifty years, until 1995.
Based on the Wikipedia article White House at Night (CC BY-SA 4.0).
