Charley Toorop

As a self-taught artist, Charley Toorop developed a highly personal, robust painting style. She mostly painted portraits, such as the monumental canvas ‘Three Generations’, in which she depicted her father, Jan Toorop, her son, Edgar Fernhout, and herself in her characteristic, sober, realist style. As the daughter of a famous artist, Charley Toorop grew up surrounded by avant-garde artists. She was a close friend of Piet Mondriaan and exhibited from an early age alongside great names such as Georges Braque, Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso. She was inspired by the work of Wassily Kandinsky and Vincent van Gogh, and styles as diverse as Expressionism, the Bergen School and Magic Realism. Despite these influences, she was never associated with a particular movement.