The Three Brides

In 1893 Dutch art still largely meant the Hague School, grey skies, polders and fishing boats seen with a sober, realist eye. That year Toorop showed this large drawing at the Dutch Etching Club, and it is often counted among the first truly Symbolist works made in the Netherlands. There is no landscape in it and no weather. Three brides stand across the middle. On the left a nun-like figure, devout and frightened. In the centre a young bride, naked under her veil and crowned for the wedding. On the right a bride with a menacing face and a string of skulls on her chest. In front of them, girls carry bells, lilies and butterflies, which Toorop described as the birth of the eternally feminine here on earth, and behind them a choir of long, repeated figures sings of the dangers still waiting for the young bride. He kept the whole sheet to white, matte black and rust brown. The art dealer Van Wisselingh bought it that same year, and in 1919 Helene Kröller-Müller, the collector whose holdings became this museum, bought it at auction.