Aan de duinzoom

By 1898 Toorop was painting the coast in a very different key. This is the dune's edge between the two Katwijk villages, Katwijk Binnen inland and Katwijk aan Zee down on the water, with the fishermen's nets spread over the sand to dry. He built it from small separate touches of colour in the pointillist manner he had taken up after seeing Georges Seurat's work in Paris, so the light on the dunes seems to break into flecks of pure pigment. The nets drying on the sand are the one reminder that this bright stretch of dune is a working coast.