Imagined village

Below the exploding stars is an imagined village. The church spire might have been inspired by Van Gogh's native land, the Netherlands.

Flaming tree

Connecting earth and sky is the flamelike cypress, a tree traditionally associated with graveyards and mourning.

Expressionist sky

Van Gogh's night sky is painting in his classic Expressionist style using intense colors.

Morning star

Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo: "This morning I saw the country from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big." This morning star may be this large white star.

The style

The blue-and-green style of this painting, which appears beautiful and luxurious, was often specially chosen to depict subjects of Daoist paradise, imperial parks, and past golden ages such as the Han (202 BCE-220 CE) and the Tang dynasties (618-907 CE).

The features

This work reveals many features of early narrative paintings in landscape settings from the Tang dynasty. The steep mountain forms are complex in structure, their surfaces filled with heavy washes of azurite, malachite, and ochre.

The clouds

White clouds encircle the mountains for a dramatic effect, while numerous peaks and hills are capped by lines of trees.

The trees

Even in the middle and foreground, which are clearly delineated, landscape forms are also embellished with vegetation and flowering trees.

The horses

Perhaps the most conspicuous aspect of this gorgeous landscape is the line of figures and horses making their way along the mountain path.