June 1889. Van Gogh is a voluntary patient at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in Saint-Rémy, one year before his death. From the barred window of his cell he watches the night sky over the Alpilles hills, then paints it from memory in the studio downstairs, not as it looked but as it felt.

The village below is invented. The cypress rises like a dark flame. The sky moves in eleven swirling stars and a crescent moon, painted with such turbulence that physicists have since found genuine mathematical turbulence in its brushwork. Van Gogh thought little of it, mentioning it only in passing in a letter to his brother Theo.

He never knew what it became. The canvas has hung at the Museum of Modern Art since 1941, considered too important to ever lend or sell. It is very likely the most recognised night sky ever painted.