Jan Theodoor Toorop was born on the island of Java, to a mother of mixed Chinese and British descent and a father employed by the Dutch colonial administration that ruled the Indonesian archipelago during the nineteenth century. With ancestral ties to the Belanda Hitam (Black Dutchmen), Africans recruited from the Dutch Gold Coast to serve in the colonial army in the Dutch East Indies, Toorop was certainly perceived “exotic” upon arrival in The Netherlands in 1869.

In 1880, Toorop enrolled at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, though the conservative academic curriculum held little appeal. By 1883, he befriended the Belgian artist William Degouve de Nuncques, who introduced him to the avantgarde in Belgium. For Toorop, European culture did not replace but rather layered itself on the visual and spiritual foundations formed during his childhood in Indonesia. Like Vincent Van Gogh, Toorop developed socialist sympathies after witnessing the brutal working condition in the Borinage mining region, a horrific landscape more vivid than any hell imagined by the Symbolists.

Symbolist literature of Maurice Maeterlinck and Émile Verhaeren further became the source of inspiration for Toorop and his contemporaries.

Between 1882 and 1889, Toorop lived intermittently in Ixelles, near Brussels. In 1884 he became the sole Dutch member of Lex XX (Les Vingt), joining the inner circle alongside James Ensor and Fernand Khnopff. Through these relationships, Toorop served as a crucial conduit between progressive artists in Belgium and The Netherlands. After meeting the British student Annie Hall, he divided his time between The Netherlands, England, and Belgium. In April 1890, the couple settled in the Dutch coastal town Katwijk aan Zee, jumpstarting a new artistic endeavor. Despite nearly a decade abroad, Toorop was widely regarded as the most Netherlands’ leading avant-garde artist, with international connections and aspirations.

Soon after his return, Toorop co-founded the Haagse Kunstkring, where he organized the first retrospective exhibition of Vincent van Gogh, followed by a group show of Les XX in 1892. That same year, Sar Péladan visited The Netherlands, luring Toorop to participate in his Salon de la Rose+Croix, ushering in his foray into symbolism. Fatal, seductive female figures—symbols of sensuality and destroyer of men—soon entered his visual vocabulary. Drawing on his East Indies heritage of tropical flora, ornamental carving, and Hindu iconography, Toorop created his most important symbolist drawing The Three Brides, now in the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, in 1893. After this pivotal achievement, he largely returned to portraiture and became one of the most sought-after artists in the Netherlands.

Willem Gerard van Nouhuys (1854-1914) was born in Zaltbommel, a provincial town with little literary lifestyle. Largely self-educated, he immersed himself in Greek, Latin, Italian, and studied Shakespeare and Dante alongside Dutch and Norwegian writers. In 1891 he moved to The Hague to devote himself entirely to writing.