Cypres Bij Sterrennacht - Road with Cypress and Star

The cypress tree was a motif that Van Gogh frequently used, although at first he struggled to depict them. Their dominant form and dark colour mode them overpowering in a landscape, and dwarfed elements around them, which can be seen here in the relationship of the tree to the small figures. The broad path that winds up the canvas with a strangely distorted perspective also dominates the figures, appearing virtually to engulf them with its shining luminescence.

Vincent van Gogh (1853-90) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter whose work had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. In just over a decade, he produced more than 2,100 artworks but received little recognition during his lifetime.

Van Gogh was unsuccessful during his lifetime and was considered a madman and a failure. He became famous after his suicide, and exists in the public imagination as the quintessential misunderstood genius, the artist "where discourses on madness and creativity converge". His reputation began to grow in the early 20th century as elements of his painting style came to be incorporated by the Fauves and German Expressionists.

Van gogh attained widespread critical, commercial and popular success over the ensuing decades, and is remembered as an important but tragic painter, whose troubled personality typifies the romantic ideal of the tortured artist.