Van Gogh House by Allison Katz

One of my favorite paintings in the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square is Two Crabs by Van Gogh, room 43. It is thought to have been painted soon after his release from hospital in Arles in January 1889. On 7 January he 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'. He was probably also inspired by a woodcut by Hokusai, Crabs, which was reproduced in the May 1888 issue of 'Le Japon Artistique', sent to Vincent by Theo in September of that year. In Two Crabs, it is probably the same crab, shown both on its back and upright. It is a Cancer pagurus, commonly known as the brown crab, a robust creature of a reddish-brown colour, having an oval carapace with a characteristic "pie crust" edge and black tips to the claws. Van Gogh wasn't a Cancerian – he was born 30 March, which makes him an Aries – but he does seem to have exhibited several key traits of that fourth sign of the Zodiac: moody, unpredictable, self-protective and "highly sensitive to the point of being overly emotional" (if there can be such a thing.) Additionally, Cancerians are all about home, and they love their home and family more than anything else in this world. It's not such a leap to imagine that Van Gogh found in 87 Hackford Road a comforting shell, a safe house that protected his vulnerable interior, as he tested his nerves out in the rough, frenetic city. He even invited his sister to join him in the same house, and she would end up sleeping in the bedroom next to his on the third floor. Many lines from the Cancerian horoscopes that I read (my birthday is 12 July) sound like advice for Vincent; take this one, by Rob Breszny in Free Will Astrology, 3 June 2021: 'Don’t be concerned about being disloyal to your pain by being joyous.'