Charley Toorop (24 March 1891 – 5 November 1955) was a Dutch

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

and lithographer. Her full name was Annie Caroline Pontifex Fernhout-Toorop.

Life

Charley Toorop was born in Katwijk. She was the daughter of

Jan Toorop Johannes Theodorus 'Jan' TooropJan Toorop

Edgar Fernhout (1912–1974) also became a painter. Her other son, (1913–1987), became a filmmaker, and often worked together with

Joris Ivens Georg Henri Anton "Joris" Ivens (18 November 1898 – 28 June 1989) was a Dutch documentary filmmaker. Among the notable films he directed or co-directed are '' A Tale of the Wind'', '' The Spanish Earth'', ''Rain'', ''...A Valparaiso'', ''M ...

. As a filmmaker he sometimes used the name John Ferno. Charley's daughter in law was the well-known Jewish photographer

Eva Besnyö Éva Besnyő (1910–2003) was a Dutch-Hungarian photographer who participated in the ''Nieuwe Fotografie'' (New Photography) movement. Biography Born in Budapest, Besnyö was brought up in a well-to-do Jewish home. In 1928, she started to study ...

(1910–2003), who married John in 1933. In the on-line biography of the Dutch poet

Hendrik Marsman Hendrik Marsman (30 September 1899, in Zeist – 21 June 1940, in Gulf of Biscay) was a Dutch poet and writer. He died while escaping to Great Britain, when the ship he was sailing on, the ', either suffered a fatal engine-room explosion, or wa ...

on the website of the Charley Toorop is mentioned as one of the women who had a relationship with Marsman before he married in 1929 his wife Rien Barendregt.

Work

Charley Toorop became a member of the group of artists called ''Het Signaal'' (The Signal) in 1916. The group aimed at depicting a deep sense of reality through the use of colours and heavily accentuated lines and through fierce contrasts of colours. This is one of the reasons why Toorop is seen as adherent to the

Bergense School The Bergen School ( nl, Bergense School) was a movement in Dutch painting which manifested itself between 1915 and 1925. It is characterised by an expressionist style, influenced by cubism and showing a preference for darker colours. The participa ...

. Toorop befriended other artists, among them Bart van der Leck and Piet Mondriaan. In 1926 Charley Toorop went to live for two years in Amsterdam, where her painting became influenced by film. Frontally depicted figures stand isolated from each other, as if lit by lamps at a movie set. Her

still life A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, m ...

s show kinship to the synthetic

cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...

of Juan Gris. From the 1930s onwards, she painted many female figures, as well as nudes and self-portraits in a powerful, realistic style. Well-known is her large painting ''Three Generations'' (''Drie generaties'') (1941–1950; in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam), which is a self-portrait, a portrait of her father and of her son Edgar, in which she unites both realism and a sense of symbolism. Her ruthless realism has a magic touch. "Is the natural appearance reality," she wondered in 1917, "or can we sense in its form only the most unreal that appears before us? This unreal, which is the most real." Toorop had lived at many different places, but from 1932 on she resided in Bergen, North Holland, a town she'd previously had her home between 1912-1915 and 1922–1926. There she designed and commissioned a house called "De Vlerken", situated at the Buerweg 19. The house is still there, although after a fire its thatched roof has been replaced by a tiled roof. Charley Toorop died in Bergen on November 5, 1955. Her works are in many public collections, notably in the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo.

Literature

* Rembert, Virginia Pitts (2005) "Charley Toorop" in: ''Woman's Art Journal'', 26, no. 2, (2005): 26–32. * Bremer, Jaap B.J. (1995) "Charley Toorop : works in the Kröller-Müller Museum collection", Otterlo : Kröller-Müller Museum. , .

Exhibitions (selection)

* November 11, 2008 – April 5, 2009: ''"Werken op papier" - Charley Toorop (1891–1955)'' (prints), Museum Kranenburgh, Bergen, North Holland * September 27, 2008 – February 1, 2009: the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam showed her work in the exhibition "Vooral geen principes!". * September 4, 2004 – March 13, 2005: an exhibition of her work was held at the Groninger Museum in

Groningen Groningen (; gos, Grunn or ) is the capital city and main municipality of Groningen province in the Netherlands. The ''capital of the north'', Groningen is the largest place as well as the economic and cultural centre of the northern part of t ...

. * January 12, 1982 - April 12, 1982: retrospective exhibition of Charley Toorop in Centraal Museum in Utrecht.

Public collections

* Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam * in Bergen, North Holland * Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo *

Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar is a city museum located in the center of Alkmaar on the Canadaplein (Canada Square). The museum is devoted to presenting and preserving the cultural history of Alkmaar and the surrounding region. History In 1873 the mus ...

Alkmaar Alkmaar () is a city and municipality in the Netherlands, located in the province of North Holland, about 30 km north of Amsterdam. Alkmaar is well known for its traditional cheese market. For tourists, it is a popular cultural destination. The ...

* Groninger Museum in

* Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, The Netherlands

Notes and references

External links

Self portrait with palette, Kunstmuseum The Hague

biographical notes of Charley Toorop, in Dutch RKD-Archive, The Hague

some pictures of her paintings: on the website of Museum of Modern Realism
{{DEFAULTSORT:Toorop, Charley 1891 births 1955 deaths 20th-century Dutch women artists 20th-century Dutch painters Dutch women painters Dutch people of British descent Modern painters People from Katwijk People from Bergen, North Holland Dutch lithographers Women lithographers 20th-century lithographers