Analyzing the brush strokes and colors in the painting “Starry Night” reveals an astonishing similarity to the underlying fluctuations occurring in Earth’s atmosphere, demonstrating that Van Gogh had a profound understanding of natural processes.
A new study indicates that this famous painting by the artist Vincent van Gogh holds far more intrigue than meets the eye.
Van Gogh’s masterpiece “Starry Night” is one of the most famous paintings in the world. (Photo: Andrew Chin/ Getty Images).
In their analysis of the brushwork and colors in the painting, researchers discovered that the chaotic swirling sky shares many characteristics with the invisible dynamical processes occurring in Earth’s atmosphere.
Van Gogh painted this piece in June 1889 while residing in a mental asylum in southern France, recovering after a mental breakdown that had led him to inflict a self-injury to his ear six months prior.
The masterpiece “Starry Night” was created using oil paints, depicting a swirling sky viewed from the window of his room, with an imaginary village added to the foreground. This work is renowned for its intricate brush strokes and vibrant color palette.
Chinese researchers have noted the similarities between the swirling forms in the painting and the flow dynamics of liquids and gases. They delved deeper into the study of this artwork.
In a publication in the journal Fluid Physics, the research team analyzed every minute detail of the brush strokes and colors, finding both elements closely resemble the turbulence of gases in the atmosphere.
Oceanographer and fluid dynamics expert Huang Yongyang from Xiamen University, a co-author of the study, stated: “The analysis shows that the artist had a profound and intuitive understanding of natural phenomena.”
“The accurate depiction of that turbulence may stem from studying the movement of clouds and the atmosphere or an innate perception of how to capture the dynamic nature of the sky.”
Van Gogh painted this while looking through the window of his room in the asylum in southern France. The village in the foreground is imagined. (Photo: Getty Images).
The researchers specifically analyzed 14 “swirls” in the sky of the painting and found that these shapes conform to the patterns predicted by Kolmogorov’s basic law of variables.
Kolmogorov’s law is a physical rule that describes how gases move in the atmosphere at various levels depending on inertial energy.
In this painting, the inertial energy is represented by the intensity of the yellows used by the artist.
Upon closer examination, they also recognized that the distance and weight of each brush stroke relate to the Batchelor ratio. In fluid and molecular dynamics, the Batchelor ratio describes the size of vortices and droplets before they dissipate in turbulent fluid.
However, Kolmogorov and Batchelor developed these laws decades after the artist’s death. Thus, it is clear that Van Gogh did not utilize knowledge of fluid dynamics; rather, he likely painted based on general observations of the sky or natural swirls.
Similarly, the connection between energy and the color yellow is also an interesting coincidence, stemming from the artist’s instinctive perception.
The researchers analyzed the distance and weight of the brush strokes in each swirl of the painting’s sky (Photo: Yinxiang Ma).
Clearly, the work “Starry Night” stimulates associations with processes occurring in the natural world.
In 2020, researchers named a new spider species after this painting due to the similarity between the colorful swirls in the artwork and the glowing dots on the body of this newly discovered spider.
In 2021, microbiologists also noted a remarkable similarity between the iconic swirls in the painting and colonies of mutated bacteria.
In May 2024, new images sent back from Jupiter by NASA’s Juno spacecraft showed swirling storms in Jupiter’s northern hemisphere that closely resemble Van Gogh’s brush strokes.
These swirling clouds are also related to turbulent patterns in Jupiter’s atmosphere, similar to those on Earth.
