In which French city did Van Gogh paint Starry Night Over the Rhône? Arles.
Van Gogh painted Starry Night Over the Rhône in September 1888 in Arles, a city in southern France. He worked beside the Rhône, only a short walk from the Yellow House on Place Lamartine, where he rented rooms and hoped to establish an artists’ community with Paul Gauguin.
The painting captures gaslight shimmering across the river, with two figures walking in the foreground beneath a star-filled sky. Night scenes fascinated Van Gogh because they allowed him to explore artificial light, reflections, and intense colour rather than simply reproduce daylight appearances.
This painting is often confused with The Starry Night, the famous swirling-sky canvas painted in 1889 at Saint-Rémy. They are different works from different places and years. Starry Night Over the Rhône is now in Paris at the Musée d’Orsay, while The Starry Night belongs to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.