The Parsonage at Nuenen by Moonlight

The Parsonage at Nuenen by Moonlight (1885) at the Noordbrabants Museum in 's-Hertogenbosch depicts the family home in an entirely different register from his daylight studies of the same building — the moonlit view transforming familiar architecture into something mysterious, the building's solid form dissolved into silver-grey tones against a night sky. Van Gogh was interested in nocturnal subjects long before his famous Starry Night and Café Terrace at Night: he had been studying the effects of artificial and celestial light since his earliest Dutch-period work. Moonlight flattened the parsonage's familiar architecture, erased its daytime colour, and replaced the comfort of a family home with the strange dignity of a building seen in silence and darkness. The Noordbrabants Museum, focused on the cultural history of the Dutch province where Van Gogh spent his formative years, holds this alongside other key Nuenen works.

The nocturnal palette is restricted to deep blues, blue-greens, and the warm glow of interior light from the parsonage windows. Moonlight on the garden and surrounding trees is rendered in the silvery tones appropriate to reflected lunar illumination. The composition contrasts the dark mass of the building with the lighter sky above.