Jan Theodoor Toorop was born in Indonesia. His mother Maria Magdalena Cooke was born in Indonesia. She had the British nationality and his father Christoffel Theodoor Toorop was Dutch and worked as civil servant in the Dutch East Indies (today’s Indonesia).
Toorop moved to the Netherlands when he was ten years old. He was sent to school in preparation for an administrative or commercial career in Indonesia but became an artist instead. The young Toorop took painting lessons from Herman van der Weele in 1875. He was taught at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam between 1880-82. He lived and worked in Brussels from 1882-86. At the time the Belgian capital was the one of the main European centres for new artistic ideas. He became a highly respected artist within various avant-garde circles in Europe and was a.o. an invited member of Les Vingt in Brussels. In 1886 he married Annie Hall. Around 1890 Toorop was undoubtedly the most progressive artist in the Netherlands and one of the most innovative artists in Europe.
He liked to experiment and quickly mastered the new styles that were turning the modern art world upside down. His daughter Charley, who became a successful painter herself, was born in 1891. Toorop’s Symbolist phase ended as abruptly as it had begun, and this was connected to his move to Katwijk in 1898. The artist seems to have been very sensitive to the places in which he worked: his Symbolist drawings were virtually all created in The Hague, while his pointillist work can usually be linked to his homes at the seaside, such as Katwijk and Domburg. Besides Toorop’s symbolist oeuvre he worked in various styles such as Realism, Pointillism, Art Nouveau, Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.
After his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1905, Toorop’s art increasingly started to reflect his interest in religious themes. Together with Vincent van Gogh and Piet Mondriaan Toorop is considered a Dutch key figure in the transition towards modern art in Europe. He died in The Hague in 1928.
