Annie Caroline Pontifex Toorop, known as Charley, was born in Katwijk as the only child of Dutch-Indonesian Jan Toorop and the British Annie Hall. In 1912, upon coming of age, she married the philosopher Henk Fernhout against her parents’ wishes. The couple had two sons before divorcing five years later. Charley was deeply influenced by her father, but she also formed friendships with Mondriaan and Bart van der Leck. Charley’s own style ultimately established her as a leading Dutch figure of the New Objectivity movement, often referred to as Magic Realism.

Charley was drawn to theosophy and Eastern mysticism, particularly the belief that spirituality could be understood in psychical terms and that the body served as the incarnation of the spirit. Before her separation, Charley had already moved to Amsterdam in 1916 with her children, where she lived in an artists’ community with Peter Alma, and others. After a few years she settled in Schoorl, a Dutch coastal town outside of Amsterdam, while continuing to spend time in Paris and summers in Domburg.

Early in her career, Charley was championed by art advisor H.P. Bremmer, who introduced her work to the important collector Helene Kröller-Müller, who purchased her first work by Charley in 1916 and continued to acquire many more, now in the museum in Otterlo. The present early drawing belonged to another great collector: Willem Wolff Beffie. A friend of Mondriaan, Kandinsky, Jawlensky, and Le Fauconnier, Beffie was a passionate collector with an international eye. His collection included works by Paul Klee, Chagall, and many Dutch artists, with hundreds of works often gifted to friends and family soon after acquisition. In 1938, facing persecution under anti-Jewish racial laws, Beffie emigrated to the United States, bringing part of his collection with him. He died on the dance floor in New York in 1950, leaving behind a legacy now represented in major museums around the world.