Charley Toorop

Charley Toorop
Birth name	Annie Caroline Pontifex Fernhout-Toorop
Born	March 24, 1891(1891-03-24) Katwijk
Died	November 5, 1955(1955-11-05) (aged 64) Bergen, North Holland
Nationality	Dutch
Field	painting, printmaking

Charley Toorop (March 24, 1891 – November 5, 1955)^[1] was a Dutch painter 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 and Annie Hall. She married the philosopher Henk Fernhout in May 1912, but they divorced in 1917. Her son Edgar Fernhout (1912–1974; see nl:Edgar Fernhout) also became a painter. Her other son, John Fernhout (1913–1987),^[2] became a filmmaker, and often worked together with Joris Ivens. As a filmmaker he sometimes used the name John Ferno. Charley's daughter in law was the well-known Jewish photographer Eva Besnyö (1910–2003; see de:Éva Besnyő), who married John in 1933.

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.

Toorop was befriended to other artists, for example to Bart van der Leck and Piet Mondriaan. In 1926 Charlie Toorop went to live 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 lifes show kinship to the synthetic cubism 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."^{[citation needed]}

Toorop designed and commissioned a house called "De Vlerken", situated at the Buerweg 19 in Bergen (North Holland). The house is still there, although after a fire its thatched roof has been replaced by a tiled roof.

Charley Toorop died in Bergen, North Holland on November 5, 1955. Her works are in many public collections, notably in the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo.

Notes and references

1. ^ See: Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (Charley Toorop).
2. ^ [1]

Literature

• Rembert, Virginia Pitts (2005) "Charley Toorop" in: Women'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. ISBN 90-74453-15-5 9789074453158.

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.

Public collections

• Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam
• Museum Kranenburgh in Bergen, North Holland
• Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo
• Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar in Alkmaar
• Groninger Museum in Groningen

1. ^ See: Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (Charley Toorop).
2. ^ [1]

External links

• Self portrait with palette, Gemeentemuseum The Hague
• Toorop on Artcyclopedia.com

Persondata
Name	Toorop, Charley
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	March 24, 1891
Place of birth	Katwijk
Date of death	November 5, 1955
Place of death	Bergen, North Holland