Is the natural appearance reality, or can we sense in its form only the most unreal that appears before us? This unreal, which is the most real.
–Charley Toorop

Charley Toorop was a Dutch painter and lithographer. Her full name was Annie Caroline Pontifex Fernhout-Toorop. As a self-taught artist, Charley Toorop developed her own painting style that reflected a businesslike, hard reality. She mainly painted portraits. In the monumental painting ‘Three Generations’ she portrayed her father, Jan Toorop, her son and herself in the sharp realism that is so characteristic of her oeuvre. As the daughter of a famous artist, Charley Toorop spent her youth in avant-garde art circles and exhibited at a young age with big names such as Paul Cézanne, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. Her work shows influences from various styles such as expressionism, the Bergen School and magical realism.