Residents of the Willem Arntsz Huis, Utrecht

In March 1924 Charley Toorop went to work inside the Willem Arntsz Huis, the psychiatric hospital in Utrecht, painting its patients. She stayed three weeks and came away with three portraits. Afterwards she said she would have liked to work there longer, that it had fascinated her immensely, but that it became too overwhelming for her. This canvas is one of the three, two women seated side by side. For many years the Stedelijk listed it as The Imbeciles, using the clinical word of the period, and it now carries the name of the institution instead. Another of the three portraits, a single patient, belongs to the Kröller-Müller Museum.