''Two Crabs'' is an 1889

oil painting Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of ...

Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inc ...

. It is a still life of two crabs, one on its back and one upright, with a green background. The work is

oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) & lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturated ...

on canvas of high and wide. Van Gogh is thought to have painted this work after his hospital release in January 1889. It was possibly inspired by a Japanese print of a crab by Hokusai that he had seen in the magazine ''

Le Japon Artistique ''Artistic Japan'' was a magazine of Japanese art, published by German-born French art dealer Siegfried Bing. It ran for thirty-six monthly issues from 1888 to 1891 in French, English, and German editions and contributed to a revival of Japonism ...

'', that his brother Theo van Gogh had sent him in September 1888. The painting is held by the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director ...

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, on loan from a private collector.

Related work

'' Crab on its Back'', a still life of a single crab lying on its back, is a related painting by Van Gogh. It is in the collection of the

Van Gogh Museum The Van Gogh Museum () is a Dutch art museum dedicated to the works of Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries in the Museum Square in Amsterdam South, close to the Stedelijk Museum, the Rijksmuseum, and the Concertgebouw. The museum opene ...

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Two Crabs 1889 paintings Crustaceans in art Paintings in the National Gallery, London Paintings by Vincent van Gogh Still life paintings

Related work

See also

References