The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-06-28
FLIGHT
 SHOWN IN GUEST
 PAIN TIERS WORKS
Hollands Distinguished Modernist, Jan Toroop,
 Elicits Admiration.

The Hague, Netherlands, June 28.-I The Jan Toroop exposition, now being held here, reveals three remarkable works of Hollands most distinguished religious symbolist and modernist in art, devoted to t"The Flight from Bel gium.' Both here and in Amster- dam where they have already been shown, these studies have created comment. Conceived in an exalted symbolism and executed in a, modified cubist style, they have both intrigued and eaptivated the conservative Dutch public.
 'fAfter all, said MT. de Neree tot Babberich, one of the younger and more radical artists of the Neither lands, How is one to put upon can vas anything which can give any sort of adequate conception of the horror, the suffering and the incredible wrong of the German devastation of Belgium, merely by picturing isolated instan- ces of hideous acts? It is 3, situa- ton where only the most cOmpre- competent expression to the subject offered. It is this that Jan Toroop has attempted"
 The most remarkable of the three pictures is entitled 'HThe Holy Flight 1914 During the Belgian Exodus It has been purchased by the Munici- pal Museum of Amsterdam In gen. eral character it is cubist as well as synbolica1, though in this instance | the artist has not employed that b1az- ing counterpoint of primary colors of which he is so fond in his land scapes- The entire work is a study in browns, with a fiat perspective all. most Dureresque- In the background are seen the roofs and facades of a city, prominent among which is church, from whose windows the
 flames are curling. In the foreground 2 e. sense 1dealized save by a certain as- ceticisn of features with closed eye lids and holding a simple, wooden cross tightly clasped to the breast. With the utmost poignancy the figure reveals an intolerabIe burden of pain; bending at three-quarters length across the whole of the forefront of the composition, in an attitude of the blindest and most pFecipitated flight. Behind, in the middle distance, are the coifed faces and yelled shoulders of five nuns Ca favorite subject with the artist) bent in the haste of even more urgent desparation. The whole con- stttutes a, very effective symbolism of the Belgian exodus, expressing in this way, probably in more enduring form, the spirit of the Belgian people driven 1 before the Prussian armies, than Ad- r1an Ost-another Dutch artist devot- ing himself to Belgian theme@has been able to achieve by employing an almost equally striking realism of method
 The Holy Flight has inspired the
 Dutch poet, Mick Janssen, to a verse
 written upon seeing Toroop's unusual
 painting. She has also translated 1 others of Toroop's works into poetic l prose, which has been widely publish l ed in the Netherlands, adding to the
 fame which the artists extraordinary l symbolism has secured for him. I over many of the cubists, futurists and synbolists whose work has been a | source of amusement to the general l public for some time. He not only
 can both draw and paint, but has l done so with success, his careful, re-
 alistic work of 30 years ago still be | ing conside cred as able as that of any
 of the contemporary school of Dutch I painters It would fbe difficult to inn- 1 agine a more striking contrast than
 that afforded at the present e1posi- l ton by the exhibition, side by side, of one of the paintings of Toroop's
 earlier, nnaterialistio manner, '"The Pickpocket" piece of admirable re- i a.Iism, and a wierd conception in the
 Aubrey Beardsley style, called The kDeep Sea-
 I Toroop's personal history is by, nc means an ordinary one An "Indo''
 as the colonial balf-breeds are called. hailing from Sumatras in the Dutch East Indies, he began his work a
 painter of uncomprom1sing realism. l Furthermore. he was himself a pro-
 nounced materialist, holding no reIig- ious convictions. With his conver- sion to Catholicism, however, the
 whole style of his painting changed He was devoted himself to seeking to express in line and color the liturgy I of the Roman Catholic Church by a
 symbolism of his own conception in
 such of his exquisite, aetheria1 draw
 1ngs as Marriage Love- and ''The
 Bridge of Cody .Life.''