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Jan Toorop, 'High Tide', 1891

Key facts
Full title High Tide
Artist Jan Toorop
Artist dates 1858 - 1928
Date made 1891
Medium and support Oil on canvas
Dimensions 67.7 × 76 cm
Inscription summary Signed
Acquisition credit On loan from the Broere Charitable Foundation
Inventory number L1334
Location Room 43
Image copyright On loan from the Broere Charitable Foundation, © the Broere Charitable Foundation
Collection Main Collection
High Tide
Jan Toorop
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Jan Toorop was a Dutch-Indonesian artist, born to a Dutch father and Chinese-Indonesian mother. After travelling to the Netherlands as a young boy, he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 1883, where he met many influential artists such as James Ensor and Théo van Rysselberghe.

Toorop joined the Brussels-based Les XX group in 1885 and participated in many of their annual exhibitions. He was greatly influenced by his fellow members of Les XX, adopting a more colourful, Neo-Impressionist palette. Taking inspiration from the pointillists in the group, Toorop became one of the most important pointillist painters in the Netherlands.

This work is a prime example of Toorop’s paintings of rural fishing communities in the south of the Netherlands. He was especially interested in the ‘simplicity’ of their daily lives. Toorop portrayed the fishermen at work on the coast, weaving an emphatic social criticism throughout his paintings. He painted many of the fishermen and women seating in the dunes, hauling in their boats, or mending their nets.

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