Vincent van Gogh - Giant Peacock Moth Notebook

Giant Peacock Moth / Great Peacock Moth / Emperor Moth, painted in 1889 in oil on canvas by Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Van Gogh first encountered the large night moth at Saint-Rémy and wrote to Theo that it was too beautiful to kill simply so that he could paint it. He initially drew the insect from life and later used the drawing as the basis for this canvas. Van Gogh mistook it for a death's-head moth and added a skull-like marking, but the insect was actually a giant peacock moth.