De bruid / The bride

In 1883 Jan Toorop became friends with with the painters who formed the modernist group 'Les Vingt'.
Two years later Toorop joined this group and showed his work successfully at their annual exhibitions.
They did not have a particular program, but were concerned only to bring together those artists who were thought to be moving in the modern direction.
The following years Toorop travelled between Belgium. Holland and England.
It was in England that Toorop produced his well known Impressionist works such as Trio Fleuri (1885 no 2) Toorop had seen work by all the French Impressionists, not only in Paris but also at the exhibitions of Les Vingt in Brussels.
Sometimes as in 1885, the Paris art dealer Durant-Ruel brought a group of paintings to this exhibitions, by Monet, Pissaro and Degas.
In the same year Toorop met Annie Hall in Brussels where she was studying French and music. They were married in 1886.
In De Bruid (The bride) we see a young woman in her wedding dress seated by an open window, to suggest depth.
In the portrait Toorop is far from loud, but he did work in broad planes and limited his colours.
The colouring as a whole is rather heavy in tone without it making the painting as a whole heavy.
The limited space certainly is embued with an atmosphere of a certain dreamy inaction.
In his technique we clearly can see that Toorop is inspired by artists such as James Whistler and James Ensor. The young woman clad in white, has a slightly reflective expression.