Charley Toorop (born Annie Caroline Pontifex Fernhout-Toorop)

In the first half of the twentieth century Charley Toorop became one of the most prominent and influential modernist painters in The Netherlands. A member and founder of several artist societies in Amsterdam, she also served as a patron for many artists with whom she maintained longstanding friendships throughout her life, especially Piet Mondrian, whose career she helped to promote.

Toorop had a peripatetic childhood, during which she moved to Katwijk in South Holland, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt am Main, and Nijmegen in the Gelderland province of The Netherlands. Her father, Jan Toorop, was a Dutch-Indonesian painter born in Java, while her mother, Annie Hall, came from a well-to-do family in the United Kingdom; they met at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. Inclined toward music and art, Toorop trained as a concert violinist before taking up painting as a teenager. She learned from her father, whom she had observed in his studio since her early childhood.

Toorop settled in Bergen, an artist colony in North Holland, where she would maintain a permanent residence. In 1919 she became a member of the Bergen School, a group founded in 1915 by the artists Henri Le Fauconnier and Piet van Wijngaerdt that experimented with forms of figuration inspired by Cubism and Expressionism. After a brief time in Bergen, Toorop lived in Paris between 1920 and 1921 with the help of Mondrian, who provided her with an apartment.

During the 1920s Toorop developed a broad artistic network that, in addition to Mondrian, included the artists Peter Alma, Pyke Koch, John Rädecker, and others, some of whom would exhibit alongside her at alternative salons in Amsterdam such as the Moderne Kunstkring (The Artist Circle) and De Onafhankelijken (The Independents). In 1926 Toorop began exhibiting with De Brug (The Bridge), a group of modernist figurative painters, and founded an artist society named Architectuur, Schilderkunst, Beeldhouwkunst (ASB; Architecture, Sculpture, Painting), both of which often showed at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. ASB brought into the same exhibition spaces artists working in a realist, figurative style, like Carel Willink, with representatives of De Stijl, such as Gerrit Rietveld, and those from the Amsterdam School of architecture, like Sybold van Ravestyn. The following year she signed the manifesto for the film appreciation society De Nederlandsche Filmliga (The Dutch Film League), an organization dedicating to upholding the integrity of film as an art form against encroaching commercialization. In the late 1920s, using her inheritance, she helped finance i10, Internationale Revue, an important journal edited by her then-partner Arthur Müller-Lehning. Published in Amsterdam by De Tijdstroom and distributed to cities including Zurich, London, New York, Moscow, Berlin, Dresden, Dessau, Paris, Brussels, Toronto, Basel, Vienna, and Warsaw, i10 featured contributions printed in four European languages that brought together writings by El Lissitzky, Lyonel Feininger, Naum Gabo, Vasily Kandinsky, Kasimir Malevich, Mondrian, J. J. P. Oud, Rietveld, Kurt Schwitters, and others.

Toorop promoted modern artists in her circles while also assembling a collection of modernist paintings. Having known Mondrian since childhood, she played an important role in securing his legacy in his home country of The Netherlands. She bought paintings from the artist directly—including his Composition: No. III, with Red, Yellow, and Blue (1927; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam), which she had encouraged him to exhibit at the ASB show at the Stedelijk in 1928—and also through other collectors, acquiring a work from the De Stijl architect Oud for her own collection. She also facilitated the purchase of Mondrian’s work by a group of supporters as a gift to the Gemeentemuseum (now the Kunstmuseum) in The Hague. After meeting E. L. T. Mesens, a writer and gallerist associated with Belgian Surrealism, in the early 1920s, Toorop began to acquire works from him, adding two paintings by René Magritte to her holdings, including Le promenoir des amants (The Lovers’ Promenade, 1929–30; private collection) and L’esprit comique (The Spirit of Comedy, 1928; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie). As one of the favorite artists of the influential art critic, dealer, and teacher H. P. Bremmer, Toorop herself came to the attention of collector Helene Kröller-Müller through Bremmer’s advocacy. The artist would come to figure alongside the most well represented artists in Kröller-Müller’s collection.

In 1932, after another two-year sojourn in Paris and a brief stay in Berlin, Toorop returned to Bergen and a newly-constructed permanent residence at Buerweg 19, which she dubbed “De Vlerken” (The Wings), for the diagonal arrangement of its siding. Designed by Piet Kramer in the Amsterdam School style, the house featured a studio on the second floor with furnishings by H. P. Berlage and Rietveld. Here she displayed her collection of works by Mondrian, the sculptor John Rädeker, and Zadkine, among others. The home became an important meeting place for artists from different disciplines, including the architect-designers Berlage and Rietveld; the painters Koch, Piet Mondrian, Bart van der Leck, and Carel Willink; the poets Adriaan and Henriëtte Roland Holst; and the filmmaker Joris Ivens.

In need of funds, Toorop sold some works from her holdings to private collectors in the 1930s and donated others during her lifetime to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam; additional works were dispersed after her death to the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague. In 1953 Toorop was recognized with the Dutch Foundation Artist Resistance Award for her outspokenness about the German Occupation during World War II and her refusal to collaborate or sign the Ariërverklaring (Declaration of Aryan Ancestry). Her strong network of patrons had allowed her to survive financially during the Occupation and to avoid exhibiting her work in public venues, which required membership in the Nederlandsche Kulturkammer (Dutch Chamber of Culture). She has been the subject of international solo retrospective exhibitions, including VooralGeen Principes! / Surtout pas de principes! (Above All Without Principles!), held at the Boymans van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam, in 2008 and the Musée d’art moderne, Paris, in 2010.