Boerderij

Jan Toorop's Boerderij (Farmhouse, 1885) is an early work from the Dutch-Javanese painter who would become one of Europe's most distinctive Symbolist voices in the 1890s. Toorop had returned to the Netherlands from London and Brussels, where he had encountered the Belgian avant-garde; this early farmhouse scene precedes the extreme stylization of his mature work, showing him still in a relatively naturalistic mode that would have appealed to Hague School audiences. The Dutch farmhouse subject connects him to the Hague School tradition even as his personal inclinations were already moving beyond it.

The early Toorop farmhouse is handled with a naturalism closer to the Hague School than to his later Symbolist work — tonal observation, atmospheric setting, the specific Dutch quality of farmhouse and surrounding landscape. His palette is cool and grey-toned in the Hague School manner. But even in these early works, a slightly heightened quality — more intense handling, sharper linear sensibility — anticipates the direction his mature work would take.