Van Gogh’s Time Machine

Time travel as a concept didn’t exist until five years after Vincent van Gogh’s death. In fact, when HG Wells’ first published his novella The Time Machine in 1895, the phrases time machine and time travel didn’t even exist. Neither would become part of the lexicon until well after Einstein published his theory of general relativity around 1905.

Detail, Arthur Rackham, Rip Van Winkle, 1905 (based on the 1819 story)

Before Wells and Einstein introduced the concept of moving through space-time, characters in stories fell asleep or were tricked into a future world. In Rip Van Winkle, Rip awoke to find he’d slept his life away.

In the 9th century Hindu epic Mahabarata, a king and his daughter lose generations while they pine for a perfect suitor. These accidental-time-tourists rocket forward but cannot return. Without the reciprocity of a back and forth, what’s the point?

During the late 19th Century, while writers and scientists grappled with the idea of transcendence, van Gogh got busy propelling himself through a black hole, leaping across the ages like a time lord. He took his first trip at 4 am on June 19, 1889, when, according to research by astronomers who can link the stars depicted in The Starry Night to that very day, Van Gogh begin work on what was to become his signature masterpiece.