Charley Toorop

(b Katwijk, 24 March 1891; d Bergen, 5 Nov 1955) Daughter of Jan Toorop. She was self-taught as an artist and began to paint in 1909. Her early works are luministic. While she was living in Bergen, North-Holland (1912–15) she painted in a Cubist and Expressionist style. She painted landscapes (of the province of Zeeland and Bergen), figures (her children, friends and portrait commissions) and self-portraits. Also during this period she exhibited at the Moderne Kunstkring and at De Onafhankelijken (‘The Independents’) in Amsterdam. Between 1915 and 1919 she lived in Laren, Utrecht and Amsterdam. From 1919 to 1921 she frequently stayed in Paris, where she associated with Piet Mondrian.

In 1922 P. L. Kramer built a studio-house, De Vlerken (‘The wings’), for her in Bergen. In the same year she travelled to the industrial region of Borinage in Belgium, where she worked in the style of Vincent van Gogh. At this time she began to develop a social-realist style of painting. In 1924–5 she made portraits of psychiatric patients. From 1926 until 1930 she stayed in Amsterdam, where she produced many works on city themes. Through the film maker Joris Ivens (1898–1989) she was influenced by film. In 1928 and 1929 she organized the exhibitions Architectuur Schilderkunst Beeldhouwkunst in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. In 1930–31 she lived in Paris.

Toorop settled permanently in Bergen in 1932. She painted The Friends’ Meal (Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen), a group portrait of friends and children, including artists and architects, Gerrit Thomas Rietveld, John Rädecker (1885–1956), Edgar Fernhout, Pyke Koch, Eva Besnyö and the poet Adriaan Roland Holst in 1932–3. Towards the end of the 1930s her work became more lyrical. Between 1940 and 1945 it was heavily influenced by the events of World War II. After the war she painted numerous still-lifes, for example Still-life with Clogs (1949; Otterlo, Rijksmus. Kröller-Müller). From 1941 until 1950 she worked on The Three Generations (Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen), in which she depicted herself, a sculpture of her father and her son Edgar Fernhout in her studio.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. M. Hammacher: Charley Toorop (Rotterdam, 1952) [in Dutch]

Charley Toorop, 1891–1955 (exh. cat.; Utrecht, Cent. Mus.; Stuttgart, Würtemberg. Kstver.; 1982)

N. J. Brederoo: Charley Toorop (Amsterdam, 1982) [in Dutch]

J. Bremer: Charley Toorop: Works in the Kröller-Müller Museum Collection (Otterlo, 1995)

JOHN STEEN (groveart)