Starry Night Over the Rhone by Van Gogh Florent Bodart rendered in bold black and

rendered in bold black and white

its elongated neck and dagger-shaped bill rendered with the meticulous accuracy demanded by nineteenth-century natural history publications

It sits within a lineage of European surrealism filtered through contemporary visual culture

This vintage celestial map plots the visible stars with the meticulous care of a nineteenth-century astronomer — constellations traced in fine engraved line

the fine linework and tonal gradients of this astronomical illustration reproduce cleanly at every level of detail

Starry Night Over the Rhone by Van Gogh Florent Bodart rendered in bold black andStarry Night Over the Rhone predates its more famous sibling by nearly a year, painted in Arles in September 1888. Where the later work churns with interior urgency, this one holds a different quality expansive, almost tender. Gas lamps from the city bank stretch luminous reflections across the river's dark surface, and above, the Great Bear constellation wheels in a sky of deep Prussian blue. Two figures walk at the water's edge. Van Gogh's brushwork