Charley Toorop

"Do you remember how beautiful it was, and that silly Mondrian and those silly Buddha positions right in the middle at the beach [of Domburg, Zeeland, in 1906] (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"The simple natural form doesn't exist for the new artist; there is only a expressive one.. .But is is more difficult to see the natural in images than to listen to only abstract impressions. To be part of the cosmic means to include the recognition of the natural element that leads to seeing in a spirited way. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

".. What I made here up to now [Paris, 1920] is not very special. Only a painting of my head and Eddy [her son Edgar] with it - including houses and roofs on the background - has something of what I intend to.. ..but one thing I know now for sure. That I was shocked by the [her own] paintings I received here from Holland, for example the old man I painted. It is perhaps the best thing I ever made, but what a distress all together. I want everything gradually becoming more clear. And I want to make happy, radiant things at any cost. I mean inwardly radiant and tight and silent. I really believe this will come.. .Back home again I shall study and start from the bottom again; very simple things - study flowers, hands and people's faces and learn how to paint and draw well. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"It is always the same: a struggle between making love and working. Together, that is almost impossible - at least for me; struggle between being a woman and creating art. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"You [Plasschaert] wrote about the third dimension in the [magazine] 'De Groene' - that I was searching for to learn. That's the way it is, but of course it is not 'from the theory of the third dimension'. But it is trying to give life its 'full' shape - to see God in all matter - expressed in any way. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Later, when F. [Henk Fernhout, her former husband, until c. 1916-17; he was an alcoholic] was more and more from home, I painted more and more, [I built] my own individual life - also saving my nerves (which were broken for a long time already). (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"The new artist-society will consist of painters, sculptors and architects. The founders don’t intend that the character of the union will be determined by one single art movement. They believe that there is room for every important expression of this period and they intend the new union as a gathering place for the best young artists, who will collectively determine the character of the society. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"..a painted or drawn portrait should look more alike than a photo. A photo only presents the moment itself, but in a well-painted portrait you can recognize somebody in all his expressions. Every day you have to be able to see something else in it. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"In particular, no principles - working - and purifying our own views. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Made desperate attempts - worked for 3 weeks on a self-portrait [in Paris] intended for you, have scratched off everything yesterday! Maybe I can go on with it again in the studio [she was would get on the Rue des Plantes in Paris]. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Maybe you don't know enough about the facts - I mean my life history. Probably you can discover everything in my works well enough, but.. .. perhaps it would be good if I visit you some evening, or you, or you two, for some days here with me [in Bergen ]. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"I have an idea - that still-life with the two bouquets I still have here.. .It will fit in your home perfectly - and I would really like to see it hanging there myself.. .You don't have to pay it at once if that doesn't suit you now. Then pay me in 2 times 100 for example,. in the beginning of next year?. .You will be happy with it - ànd - the painting is in the right place.. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

".Now nicely going on to work [painting] and much more free, and in particular more flowing. I hope to grow away from that rigid stuff. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"..you could call [the two artists Mondrian and Bart van der Leck ] absolute counterparts. Outwardly they are of course both abstract, of course, but I hate such a view on their art. I find it superficial to consider them like that from the very start. Their life and character is also completely different. Van der Leck lives as a peasant and lives a domestic life. Either one is abstract in his soul, or he isn't. Van der Leck is a real realist. Mondrian has always been away from the world, he is a romantic ascetic, a sophisticated monk. Van der Leck is really nice (Dutch: fijn), but he is certainly not sophisticated (Dutch: verfijnd).."

"Frankly speaking, I hate modern German art [she means Neue Sachlichkeit ].. .I don't believe it is art. It's Journalism. If you see a work of Braque, there is culture. Yes, it is interesting [German modern art], but interesting is a nasty word; that is precisely a word that fits that kind of art, especially on [[Otto Dix|[Otto] Dix]]. Those people don't develop. They start by immediately systematizing everything. Their intellect is against them."

"If you really want to give yourself as a woman ànd as a mother - completely - it is not possible to make your own creative work. That is, of course, a struggle. Being a mother is also creating, daily - even when children are grown-up - but I have always been able to connect it with my work; I have the children involved in it.. ..[Mrs. Harrenstein-Schräder: To be a mother gives you much satisfaction, I think?].. ..Yes indeed, certainly because there is also something of creation in it, and because I love the driving force that generates from the new, young [life] around you. With a child you experience the whole life in a concise way, that is something so beautiful and so pure."

"I don't believe you can really give yourself to a man, you can sympathize with him, if you have your own strong creative life, which brings your own philosophy of life."

"I know very well that Communism is the only power that will be able to cope with the ever-growing fascism and the increasing power of the Roman Catholics, and that therefore we all have to cooperate, but I can't now; once I am recovered you can count on me.. .I believe in Russia and Russian communism and from here and also through it [will develop] a new life form and also a religious form of existence. I am a great admirer of Berdyaev."

"I managed to work two mornings on Eddy's portrait in the large painting 'Three Generations' and I could go on working each morning for 1 1/2 hour., so there is some progress [after her attacks].. ..they [her son Edgar Fernhout and his wife] come now every month for a stay of a few days [in her house De Vlerken, in Bergen], for I hope to finish the painting at the end of the year, so I can exhibit it at my large retrospective exhibition. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"I've nailed them to the cross."

"Vincent van Gogh was already there for me even before I started painting myself, actually during the time I became aware. It was the first dispute with my father [ Jan Toorop ] who saw it so differently, for me he was the breakthrough to a new world. It is always a real event to see his work.. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"The Paris' public will initially stare surprised at these expressions of a heavy and gloomy passion.. ..where the Frenchman must first and foremost be struck by the absence of anything specifically considered as feminine and - [what] is not unfamiliar to many male artists: coquetry.. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"She gets moved by the old quarter [Paris, 1921] where she lives, by the people who sleep at night under the Seine bridge, by the young women with hollow eyes in the bistro. She gets touched by pity and moved by the beautiful, colorful pithiness of the people in this old quarter. That emotion, that compassion she expresses.. .Primitive, direct, instinctive is what she expresses, but with a fervor of impetus, a passion of surrender that pulls along, that makes you forget that this work is not beautiful. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"1. Never knock on doors, or even worse - to open closed doors, 2. always on time for dinner, 3. Do not mess up, 4. never unwashed at the table. Everything else was allowed. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"As main motif in front ànd large a sled with cheese sparkling orange-yellow - the product [is] carried by two porters, of which the foremost barely and only partly visible - the porter behind, on the other hand, as the only main figure of the whole painting, in his head [expressed] the whole clenched closeness of the Northern Netherlands, in which culminates the serious character of the work.. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"She gives a painting art that calls the things of life, without frills, without fuss, not tragic of emphasis, or elegiac of presentation. She presents the images of hard life, which is not only beauty. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"..[in] that gigantic self-portrait we again recognize something of the rite, with which the minister assures us that not the lower, but the Higher is our most precious property. Not a spark of humor has been left here [in her 'Self-portrait', 1932-33] for us poor non-painters.. ..Good Lord, how un-humoristic, heroic, yes dithyrambic one must consider herself, to be able to paint yourself in such a way as Charley Toorop did here. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"We can often characterize the painting art of Charley Toorop as Veristic. She is an Expressionist who wants to be un-expressionistic with an expressionist passion, as indeed many Vérists do. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"There is too much method, too much cliché in the work. One knows nowadays in advance what one will see in a portrait of Charley Toorop. The wide-eyed gaze; the forced colors in the face; the painting of the flesh like carved wood and polychromed; the merciless contour of the hair against the background; the cloddy-like enlargements and intensifications, they don't surprise for long and don't convince us anymore. translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"