Eiffel Tower may have inspired Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, says expert

James Hall believes painting's pyrotechnical music of the stars, sky and clouds' recalls Paris monument's spectacular opening

Art experts have long struggled to explain the inspiration behind Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night, in which towering cypress trees are depicted against a swirling night sky over a hillside village. Created during his incarceration in an asylum near Saint-Remy in the south of France, it is one of a series of paintings of cypress trees interpreted as an exploration of abstraction or a mystical evocation of nature.

Now the art historian Prof James Hall, a former Guardian art critic, has a new theory to explain Van Gogh's fascination with these colossal evergreens: the Eiffel Tower.