CHARLEY TOOROP
1891 Katwijk – 1955 Bergen
MYSTERIOUS LANDSCAPE
black ink on paper, 333 x 515 mm
signed lower right: Charley Toorop
dated: c. 1917-1918
provenance:
J.A.A. Mol, Veere;
Galerie De Vier Gemeten, Middelburg;
Rob Grootjans;
Korrendijk auction house, 10 June 2024, lot 496.
literature:
Francisca van Vloten en Joost Bakker, Een tere stilte en een sterk geluid – Domburgse dames en Veerse joffers1875-1985, Domburg 2009, p. 52, ill.
Mysterious Landscape is characterized by flowing black lines and a strong contrast between deep black areas and delicate hatching. Two elongated, almost mask-like faces—one shown in profile—emerge within a landscape where undulating hair transforms into abstract forms beneath a setting sun on the horizon. The refined, decorative linearity and Symbolist atmosphere lend the work a dreamlike and enigmatic quality. Human presence, nature, and abstraction merge seamlessly, resulting not in a literal scene but in a poetic, interior vision in which identity, mood, and landscape converge.
Around 1917-18 Charley Toorop produced several works that reveal a clear affinity with Symbolism. She was well acquainted with this movement through her father, Jan Toorop, who played a significant role within international Symbolist circles. Notably, however, she did not choose to work in her father’s highly popular style, but instead sought her own mode of expression. Her emerging artistic voice already distinguishes itself from his, particularly in the pronounced linearity and the more expressive treatment of form evident in this work. Around the time this drawing was made, she was also in close contact with—and briefly involved with—the poet Adriaan Roland Holst, whose work was likewise shaped by Symbolist ideas.
In 1917, Charley Toorop left her troubled marriage to Henk Fernhout after five years and the birth of three children, establishing herself as an independent professional artist. The rising sun at the center of the composition may be read as an allusion to this moment of personal and artistic renewal. During this transitional period she received support from her father whose extensive artistic network helped secure her position within the Dutch art world. The head in the upper right corner of the composition, which appears to possess an Asian character, it might be a subtle reference her father’s Indonesian heritage.
Despite an unconventional start to her artistic career, the largely self-taught and highly talented Charley Toorop succeeded, through determination and ability, in establishing herself as one of the leading female figures in the Dutch art world of the twentieth century. From the second half of the 1920s onward she increasingly specialized in a form of sober, clear-eyed realism associated with the movement known as the Nieuwe Zakelijkheid (New Objectivity).
Charley Toorop grew up in an artistic but unstable family environment shaped by the troubled marriage of her parents, including the artist Jan Toorop. During a temporary separation she traveled with her mother, Annie Hall Toorop, to the United Kingdom, where she was baptized. Initially encouraged to pursue a musical career, she first trained as a violinist before turning to the visual arts. Through her father she became acquainted with leading progressive artists in the Netherlands. Her work was exhibited with the Moderne Kunstkring in Amsterdam, and while working and exhibiting in Domburg she came into contact with artists such as Piet Mondrian and Jacoba van Heemskerck.
After her marriage to Henk Fernhout ended in 1917, Toorop established herself as an independent artist and became associated with the Bergense School in Bergen. Travels, including a visit to the Borinage in the footsteps of Vincent van Gogh, encouraged a socially engaged realism in her work. Living in Bergen and later spending summers in Westkapelle, she developed a powerful style focused on farmers, workers, and everyday life. Politically engaged, she joined the Communist Party of the Netherlands in 1947. Beyond her influential role as a painter, Charley Toorop also played an important part in fostering connections among Dutch artists from different disciplines, bringing together painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, filmmakers, and writers, and thereby contributing to a vibrant interdisciplinary cultural network. After a successful career and a remarkable life, she died in Bergen in 1955.