Explore the Production and influences of this artwork.
Road with Cypress and Star was painted in May 1890. In an earlier letter to his brother Theo, van Gogh wrote that cypresses were "always occupying [his] thoughts" and that he found them "beautiful of line" and proportioned like an Egyptian obelisk.  He had also intended on painting a nighttime view of the trees since his stay in Arles in 1888.Erickson suggests that the painting is influenced by the Christian allegory The Pilgrim's Progress, visible in the prominent road and cypress tree. The painting is one of several in which van Gogh uses cypresses prominently, and — as in Road with Cypress and Star — many of the paintings depict trees that extend beyond the top of the canvas. After finishing the work, in June 1890 while at Auvers-sur-Oise, van Gogh wrote to his friend and fellow artist Paul Gauguin that the painting's themes are similar to those of Gauguin's work Christ in the Garden of Olives.The orientation of the night sky objects may have been influenced by a conjunction of heavenly bodies on 20 April 1890, when Mercury and Venus were at 3 degrees of separation and together had luminescence comparable to Sirius.
cypress The Pilgrim's Progress Theo Paul Gauguin Arles Sirius Auvers-sur-Oise Cypress