In 1886, the whirlingly turbulent mind of Vincent van Gogh was drawn to the calm of Eugene Delacroix’s painting Christ Asleep during the Tempest, when the post-Impressionist encountered it in Paris. Amid a riot of squalling waves and shrieking disciples, Christ dozes on unperturbed. Desperate to stop the sextant of his own stormy mind from spiralling out of control, Van Gogh was understandably seduced by the serenity of Delacroix’s depiction of Christ’s cool consciousness, which, he believed, spoke “a symbolic language” to him “through colour”.

Van Gogh was especially preoccupied with the lemon yellow of Christ’s halo which must have seemed to him to form a barrier between mind and matter, composure and fear. Fast forward a couple of years to the painting of Van Gogh’s own mesmerically agitated and agitating Starry Night in 1889, and the halo’s glow in Delacroix’s painting appears refracted into a shatter of shuddering stars, each vibrating fiercely. Some minds are more composed with danger bearing down on them. Some have no choice but to let the fire play through.

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