I am not very fond of arts but there are some masterpieces that I admire and that I would like to see with my own eyes. One of them is Van Gogh’s “Starry night over the Rhone”. It was painted in September 1888 in France. Now it’s located in Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

This oil painting is a landscape presenting a view of Rhone’s bank in Arles at night. The spectator seems to look towards the opposite shore. He sees the lights in the houses there and their traces on the water. There on the back ground fuzzy contours of buildings and trees are slightly visible through the dark. The sky is filled with big bright stars reflecting in the deep blue water. On this shore there are some boats and two people – a man and a woman - walking on the sand.

It’s difficult to define what the foreground of the painting is because there are lots of details and the whole composition which make your eyes examine every piece of the canvas. As for me, it’s the water surface with the reflections on it and the starry sky above. The sky and the river in the middle of the picture are much lighter. It attracts our attention there.

The principle devices used by Van Gogh here is coloring (he uses two optional colors – blue and yellow in great variety of tones and hues) and light and shade effects. The technique used by the artist is called impasto – the paint is laid on an area of the surface very thickly and roughly. It’s the manner of Van Gogh which makes his works very expressing and lively. Looking at “Starry night over the Rhone” I seem to feel a cool breeze, to smell the river, to hear the waves’ murmur and to be a little blinded by the bright starlight.