Jan Toorop

Two worlds were united in the half-Javanese Toorop. No matter how European he became, his Javanese descent always informed his art. A self-portrait of the artist at a young age presents him as a gifted colourist and draughtsman, with an Asian appearance and a critical, open gaze.

In 1887 Jan Toorop moved to Katwijk and settled by the sea, which would be a lasting source of inspiration. He depicted it in all kinds of techniques, such as this close-up view painted with a palette knife.

Throughout his life, Toorop alternated phases in which he concentrated on a single style. Between 1888 and 1891 he had made Pointillist paintings, a style he took up again in 1900 after returning to the coast. The effect of transparency in this ethereal, mysterious seascape was created by painting dots of different colours on a light surface.

In the early 1890s Toorop exhibited large drawings full of figures and personal symbols. Here too he called on his Javanese background. These Symbolist drawings marked his big breakthrough.

Portraits are another highlight of Toorop’s oeuvre. This drawn likeness of Nelly Goudkade shows her in her nurse’s uniform. It is a remarkable portrayal of a professional woman, which was rare at the time.

Toorop took part in almost all of the European artistic renewal styles around 1900. Artists such as the Austrian Gustav Klimt and the Belgian Fernand Khnopff were closely related in the way they depicted modern women, namely as seductive but inviolable creatures.

Toorop also made a name for himself as a graphic designer, particularly of posters and book bindings. In this, too, he was a great innovator. For novels by the Dutch author Louis Couperus he designed a number of bindings that hark back to his Symbolist works.

Toorop was socially engaged from the very beginning and used his art to help redress what he believed was wrong. For example, he designed the poster for the first Dutch feminist manifestation in The Hague in 1898. It features a militant woman striking an anvil.

De Lange was an advocate of comfortable and more hygienic dress reform, one of the first feminists’ most important goals. For this portrait Toorop worked in a Pointillist technique, full of light colours and decorative shapes. He himself considered it one of his masterpieces.

From 1898 onwards, Toorop summered in the seaside resort of Domburg on the coast of Zeeland. His presence there attracted both patrons and artists, such as Piet Mondriaan. Together with the collector Marie Tak van Poortvliet, Toorop set up a pavilion in Domburg for exhibitions of contemporary art.