Portrait of Nurse Nelly

1894

Petronella Alida Goudkade, ‘Nurse Nelly’, married the writer Ary Prins in 1894. Toorop may have made this portrait of her shortly before her wedding. Nelly worked as a parish nurse in a Hague hospital. Behind her is a vague fanciful pattern of birds. This type of portrait is one of the first of a long series that Toorop would continue to make in the following years.