Jan Toorop

Jan Toorop was born on the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies in 1858 and brought something of that world back to Europe with him: sinuous, linear figures with long trailing hair that look unlike anything else in Dutch art of the time.

He moved through styles restlessly, from realism to the dotted color of pointillism to a dreamlike Symbolism full of brides, angels and fate. His most famous single image is an 1894 advertising poster for Delft salad oil, its swaying maidens so distinctive that the whole Dutch Art Nouveau style got nicknamed the salad-oil style after it. His Symbolist masterwork, The Three Brides of 1893, sets a bride of Christ and a bride of Satan on either side of a human one.

In 1905 Toorop converted to Catholicism, and his last decades went largely to religious subjects. His daughter Charley Toorop became a well-known painter in her own right.