The tragedy of Van Gogh’s death looms large in a tiny but immensely moving exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Van Gogh and the Colours of the Night pays tribute to the artist’s twilight rhapsodies, to the solace he found in stars, and to the sway of his nocturnal muse. Tracing its way from the poplars of the Brabant to the outskirts of Paris to the moonlit fields of southern France, the show climaxes in “The Starry Night”, surrounded, as always, by crowds with beeping cameras but nevertheless still revelatory in its force. This painting is so familiar that its outlines are practically imprinted on the brain. But coming to it at the end of a journey through Van Gogh’s dazzling nightscapes, we greet this old friend with new-found awe.

For Van Gogh, night was symbol and metaphor, mood and meaning. The fall of darkness meant the cessation of gruelling work for the labourer and the blessing of relaxation. It provided a time when people gathered together beneath a communal lamp, when the fire-lit window glowing inside a shadowed cottage offered a barricade of human warmth against the gloom. He saw the darkened sky opening into boundless dreams, and at the same time offering a series of mournful endings – of the day, of the season, of life. Night meant despair and enlightenment. “You surely know that one of the fundamental truths of the Bible,” Vincent wrote to Theo, is “the light that dawns in the darkness.”