Vincent van Gogh, 'Two Crabs', 1889

Vincent van Gogh is most likely to have painted Two Crabs during his stay in Arles in Provence. Notoriously, on 23 December 1888 Van Gogh cut off part of his left ear, which resulted in a month-long stay at the hospital in Arles. After returning home, on the evening of 7 January 1889, Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo: ‘I am going to set to work again tomorrow. I shall start by doing one or two still lifes to get used to painting again’. These may be the Two Crabs and A Crab on its Back (Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam), which show the same red crustacean and present a similar green background. The greater attention to detail found in the still life of the single crab might indicate that the work is a later version of Two Crabs.

Van Gogh has used vibrant reds and yellows, heightening the reddish-brown carapace and black-tipped claws. His short and swift brushstrokes and the lavish use of a bright palette create an uneven, textured surface. The apparently plain background consists of bold and broad strokes, rhythmically marked by shades of bluish-green recalling the Mediterranean waters and lush seaweeds.

The crabs are common brown crabs, easily found in Provence. The two creatures are almost identical, but the enlarged abdomen flap identifies the one on the left as a female crab. It is possible that Van Gogh painted the same crab twice and merely flipped it over to show a different angle. Perhaps he started the composition with a single crab against the green background, only to decide to turn it over and add a second figure and eventually start the canvas now in Amsterdam with just the single crab on its back.

Van Gogh skilfully copied the lifeless creatures, signifying his understanding of the tradition of animal sketches. For example, Albrecht Dürer’s woodcuts and drawings of wild animals were widely known, including his famous sketch Crab (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam) which shares some similarities with Two Crabs. More certain is the connection to Japanese woodblock prints, which Van Gogh avidly collected. He studied Japanese prints in French art historian Louis Gonse’s L’Art Japonais (1883) a few years after its publication, around mid-1888. Gonse included a print of a crab by artist Utagawa Kunisada, which Van Gogh would have undoubtedly seen. In addition, in September 1888 Theo sent Vincent a copy of the French periodical Le Japon artistique, which featured A Crab on the Seashore by the famous Japanese printmaker Katsushika Hokusai. Hokusai’s prints may have inspired Van Gogh’s linear and compositional approach to this painting. The short and dashed brushstrokes on the belly and shell of the crabs evoke the brushwork seen in Japanese calligraphy, often found in the prints of Hokusai and Kunisada. Through his two crabs, Van Gogh tied together the Eastern and Western traditions of animal sketches, combining Dürer’s detailed description of the animal with the flat surfaces characteristic of Japanese prints.

Van Gogh’s masterful use of red and green was inspired by French artist Eugène Delacroix, who had written about the use of contrasting colours. According to his theory, the sensation of colour intensifies when contrasting tones, such as red and green, yellow and purple or orange and blue, are placed close together. Related to Delacroix’s theory was the Neo-Impressionist technique, which used tiny dots of vibrant, contrasting colours to create images that Van Gogh had seen when living and working in Paris.