Crab on its Back (Dutch: Een op zijn rug liggende krab) is an 1888 oil painting by Vincent van Gogh. It is a still life of a crab lying on its back with a green background. The painting is in the permanent collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in the Netherlands.The painting is possibly inspired by a Japanese print of a crab by Hokusai that Van Gogh had seen in the magazine Le Japon Artistique, that his brother Theo van Gogh had sent him in September 1888.