A Tortured Min: van Gogh's Grapple with Death
Before discussing how Vincent’s landscapes present themes of comfort above all else, let us first look at the basis for these works: his religion. As Cliff Edwards tells us in his Van Gogh and God, when in 1874 van Gogh first read Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus, a controversial rejection of the divinity of Christ, he was not offended like most other Christians (Edwards 64). Though as a young man he was soon
to apply for ordination at the Dutch Reformed Church, Vincent never dismissed Renan’s characterization of Christ as just a charismatic and pious man, later asking his brother Theo, “Isn’t Renan’s Christ a thousand times more comforting than so many papier maché Christs they serve up to you in the…Protestant, Roman Catholic or something or other churches?” (Letter 587, van Gogh) We can see here that he was not able to find this “comfort” in common organized religions, instead looking for a more personalized version of spirituality. In the words of Tsukasa Kodera in his article “Christianity Versus Nature: A Study of van Gogh’s Thematics,” “After all these bitter experiences with the Church, Vincent came to detest the, in his own words, ‘theologians’ God’” (Mashek 228). Instead of glorifying the might of the Church and its place in history, he chose to focus on the true essence of its teachings, as seen through his eyes. As a result, Van Gogh turned to the barest basics of Christianity, adopting the religion to fit his personal spirituality, and eventually developing a unique connection with God that stayed with him throughout his life.
So how does this attitude toward spirituality affect his painting? In his own words, Vincent said his disillusionment “does not keep me from having a terrible need of – shall I say the word – religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars” (Letter 543, 
van Gogh). He tells us here of his personal connection with religion, a link that stayed with him throughout his life: nature and religion were so closely intertwined for him that they became almost interchangeable. When he felt some sort of primal thirst for God, he looked to the stars, craving the natural exuberance of a scene like Starry Night. According to Judy Sund in her article “Van Gogh’s Berceuse and the Sanctity of the Secular,” “Most religious art struck Vincent as artificial and pretentious, and he was convinced that Christ himself would scorn much of the verbal and visual imagery He inspired” (Mashek 205). And so, instead of following in this tradition of “visual imagery,” van Gogh opened a new route, focusing on his natural surroundings, the purest and most sincere topic he knew. Whatever the scene, vast or enclosed, he told Theo, “I want to say something comforting,” (Letter 531, van Gogh) expressing the overarching purpose of many of his paintings. Later in that same letter, this “comfort” comes up again when he mentions the issue of the stars, wanting “to express hope by some star, the eagerness of a soul by a sunset radiance. Certainly there is no delusive realism in that, but isn’t it something that actually exists?” (Letter 531, van Gogh) We can see that he found his desires “to express hope,” as well as his need for heaven, resting above him in the stars in the sky, and while his images, as many scholars are quick to point out, certainly do express the fervor and emotion of his life, they do not show the “menace-filled torment” (Cristin 10) commonly associated with his art. Instead of finding this “menace” in his landscapes, we should instead see van Gogh’s personal connection with religion shine through in his portrayals of the skies, beacons of an intriguing hope and precise depictions of the heavens.