After the strike

Painted around 1893 and held by the Kröller-Müller Museum, 'After the Strike' is among Toorop's most politically significant works, depicting the aftermath of industrial labor conflict at a moment when the European labor movement was achieving its greatest organizational strength. Toorop was politically engaged throughout his career, and his social subjects of the late 1880s and early 1890s reflect the anarchist and socialist sympathies shared by many Belgian and Dutch avant-garde artists of his generation. The 1890s saw major strikes across northern Europe — in Belgium's industrial regions, in the Netherlands, in Germany — and Toorop's decision to address the subject places him alongside artists such as Käthe Kollwitz who brought direct social observation to depictions of working-class struggle and its consequences. 'After the Strike' focuses on the human cost of industrial conflict: the defeated, exhausted, or grieving figures who bear the aftermath when labor actions end in failure or repression. The Kröller-Müller's holding of this work alongside Toorop's marine subjects demonstrates the remarkable range of his practice in this decade, from landscape to social realism to developing Symbolism. The circa 1893 date places the work in the years immediately following his major Symbolist canvas 'The Three Brides' (1893), suggesting simultaneous engagement with social and mystical subject matter.

Oil on canvas with the somber, weighted tonality appropriate to its subject. Figures are rendered in earth tones and muted colors that convey both the physical exhaustion of the aftermath and the social gravity of labor defeat. The paint handling shows the influence of his Post-Impressionist contemporaries — vigorous, mark-based rather than smooth academic surface.