Jan Toorop Collection

Jan Toorop (1858-1928) was a Dutch-Indonesian painter who lived in Indonesia until the age of 9 when he moved to the Netherlands - his parents did not follow and he never saw them again, although they did support him financially and he maintained a good, albeit long-distance relationship with them. He studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and in adult life divided his time between Holland, Belgium and England. He was member of the Les XX (Les Vingt) - a group of 20 painters in Belgium including James Ensor. They held annual exhibitions of their work and invited 20 international artists to participate - including Camille Pissarro (1887, 1889, 1891), Claude Monet (1886, 1889), Georges Seurat (1887, 1889, 1891, 1892), Paul Gauguin (1889, 1891), Paul Cézanne (1890), and Vincent van Gogh (1890, 1891 retrospective). He worked in various styles including Realism, Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Symbolism, Pointillism, Vintage, Art Deco and Art Nouveau. He converted to Catholicism in 1905 and also produced several religious works. Although his work is little known outside of the Netherlands he was regarded along with Van Gogh and Piet Mondrian as one of the most important and influential Dutch painters of his era.