Garenwinden / Winding yarn

In 1882 Jan Toorop went, together with Antoon Derkinderen to Brussels in order to take courses
at the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts.
Brussels was the center of a remarkable renewal in painting.
It was his involvement and his friendship with the members of Les Vingt that brought about
a change in his career. It had been intended that Les Vingt should consist of Belgian
artists only, so Toorop's membership was vetoed for a year by van Theo van Rijsselberghe,
Ferdinand Khnopff and James Ensor. Not for personal or artistic reasons, but purely in order
to maintain the principle. However he was co-opted in December 1889 all the same.
A year before Toorop started this huge, monumental painting 'Garenwinden' (Winding yarn)
It relates very much to the style of the painters who worked near the village Machelen,
like Ensor and Guillaume Vogels. Quite remarkable are the broad strokes of the thick paintbrush
and the use of the palette-knife which Toorop must have learned from Ensor and Vogels.
Although still academic in its composition, this painting shows his talent as a painter and a
draughtman and it must have been a daring undertaking for the young artist.
In his early years Toorop was very much interested in the social and human conditions of the
peasants and the working class. Here he represents the laboring class in a natural surrounding
without the dramatic and symbolic meaning that we know from his later work.
With this painting Toorop presented himself as a serious artist who must have made a big
impression on his new artist friends in Belgium.