Charley Toorop: Love for Van Gogh

Charley Toorop’s work has its own originality and power. This is not to say that she did not have an eye to the work of other artists. On the contrary. Toorop admired the painting of Piet Mondrian, but also of foreign contemporaries such as Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger. Yet there is one artist who she believes stood at the cradle of her artistry and for whom she subsequently had respect throughout her life: Vincent van Gogh. His work was for her ‘the breakthrough to a new world’.

Four essays explain her fascination and place it in a broader context. They include her travels to the Borinage and southern France where she saw the landscape and people through Van Gogh’s eyes, her awe of Van Gogh’s ‘deep barren love of reality‘ placed in the social and political engagement of the interwar period and her interest in man’s state of mind.