Annie Caroline Pontifex Toorop, known as Charley, was the daughter of Jan Toorop and the mother of Edgar Fernhout, who also became a painter. Charley learned the painter’s craft from her father and experimented in the 1920s with the styles of Cubism and Expressionism. From 1930 she developed a highly personal, realistic style with bold lines and often with strong colour contrasts. At that time she lived in a specially built house with a studio called ‘De Vlerken’ in Bergen, which was a meeting place for painters and writers. Her friends included the poet Adriaan Roland Holst, and the painters Leo Gestel, Piet Mondrian and Bart van der Leck.
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