Van Gogh’s Two Crabs

A short Ekphrastic story

Currently working on a longer piece, so here is a short piece in the meantime.

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Vincent van Gogh painted two crabs in 1889. The painting is titled “Two Crabs.” I’m not sure if he’s the one who gave it that title or if that’s just the title some museum brilliantly threw in long after he died and people realized he was a genius and wanted to know all about his artwork. It’s a simple title, but there’s something positive to be said for that. If you see two crabs, you call it two crabs. You call things as they are.

I didn’t realize van Gogh painted normal things—or maybe it’s more accurate to say that I didn’t realize van Gogh painted simple things normally. I knew about Starry Night and Sunflowers, and his few self-portraits, but I thought he was more into abstracted art and landscapes, and I honestly wasn’t the biggest fan until I saw the crabs on accident at the National Gallery in London.

I was with two friends in London during a trip—this was summer 2022. After wandering around, we found ourselves nearby the National Gallery, which hosts famous historical works of European art and artists. One of my friends didn’t care much for art, but the other one and I very much wanted to enter. We didn’t have much time before we had to head off to another itinerary thing—maybe about 40 minutes. We decided to speed run all the public levels, except you can’t actually run in the National Gallery because it’s a museum and British, so we walked (with purpose) instead.

Hundreds of priceless and groundbreaking art pieces flashed before our eyes—my other friend put up with us when we wanted to slow down and really look at some of them—but we sort of stumbled on the van Gogh section, and that’s how I found out about the painting.

The backdrop is a salt-sea green, as if you’re looking down a shallow stretch of water without any foam to hide the beauty underneath. It doesn’t seem like he was going for water, since the crabs are on top—it’s as if the sand itself is green, with little traces of kelp and floral green sea-bouquets layered among the shades, or as if the tint of the light sea-foam is imbued into a tablecloth, and the crabs are politely posing.

The crabs are a gorgeous light brown-red, with some black in their claws. They’re wriggling and alive and look quite happy to be so. I know he’s famous and influential, but I hadn’t liked van Gogh until this moment. Starry night is dark and cold. Sunflowers is a mess of yellow and brown. But these crabs, these two lovely crabs, are hopeful. One of them is on its stomach, living the crab-ocean life, while the other is on its bottom. Crabs are very flat, so it’s weird to imagine them having bottoms, but that’s what it looks like. It’s sitting up and looking at you, but not in anger or malice for having its privacy overthrown or its innards evaluated for future flavor. It waves its legs in a jaunty hello. It’s happy where it is, and it’s happy that you’re not where it is, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be friendly.

I think the Gallery had other van Goghs, but I don’t remember them. I don’t remember many of the other paintings, though the wide-spanning section (it felt like it was nearly the whole floor) filled with religious iconography sticks out in my mind. Another floor held lots of landscapes and I think some Monet. I was on the lookout for Degas and his beautiful, flowy, chalk-like dancers, but I couldn’t find any. The friend who was into art took a few photos of paintings that I don’t remember. The friend who wasn’t into art asked an employee about a depiction of St. George and the Dragon. The two crabs were my only painted subjects of photography that afternoon, a memento of the piece that breathed life and color into the room, the gallery, and the painter.

The description next to the display mentioned that van Gogh likely painted his crabs shortly after being released from the mental hospital in Arles, France. He shot himself about a year and a half after he finished this painting.