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Lifelong admiration
Even though Charley Toorop's work has an originality and power all its own, this doesn’t mean that she did not have an eye for the work of other artists. On the contrary. Toorop admired the painting of Bart van der Leck and Piet Mondriaan, but also foreign contemporaries such as Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger. Nevertheless, she believes that Vincent van Gogh – even more than her father Jan Toorop – was at the inception of her artistic practice and she has admired him all her life. For her, his work was ‘the breakthrough to a new world’.
‘Vincent van Gogh was there for me even before I started painting, actually when I became aware. It was the first dispute with my father who saw things so differently; for me it was the breakthrough to a new world. It has always remained an event to see his work.
The major Amsterdam exhibition of his work after the Liberation was even more of a Liberation for me than the actual one. That his work could hang there so beautifully, and that we could see it like that again: the masterful drawings of the French landscape, the painted landscapes, the figures and the still lifes.’
Charley Toorop, February 1953
From the Borinage to her social commitment
Charley Toorop's admiration for Vincent van Gogh is illustrated on the basis of several themes, including her self-depiction as an artist and as a human being, her pilgrimage to the Borinage, her travels to Paris and the south of France, her social commitment and her attitude towards people and nature. In addition to Toorop’s paintings and works on paper from the Kröller-Müller collection, works are included from the collections of the Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar, Centraal Museum Utrecht, Museum More, Museum De Wieger and from various private collections. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication in cooperation with Waanders Uitgevers.
Largest museum collection
Like Van Gogh, Charley Toorop occupies a special place in the collection of the Kröller-Müller Museum. Helene Kröller-Müller and her art advisor Henk Bremmer recognised something more profound in both artists, because they ‘went their own way, uninfluenced by the spirit of the age’. Thanks to the acquisitions made by Kröller-Müller between 1916 and 1938 and important later additions, including a bequest from the Hague collector C.A. Hoogendijk in 1977, the Kröller-Müller Museum now possesses the largest museum collection of Charley Toorop's work.
Afbeeldingen: Charley Toorop, Self-Portrait in front of a Palette, 1934 / Still Life with Oil-Can and Clogs, 1946-1949 /Old Apple Tree Blossoming, 1949
Appeal: ‘missing’ artworks by Charley Toorop sought
For this exhibition, the museum is seeking the paintings and drawings shown here, which Charley Toorop made between 1922 and 1925. If you have any information and are able to help, please contact us at info@krollermuller.nl.
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