Charley's daughter in law was the well-known Jewish photographer Eva Besnyö (1910–2003), who married John in 1933.

[4][5] Charley Toorop became a member of the group of artists called Het Signaal (The Signal) in 1916.

Well-known is her large painting Three Generations (Drie generaties) (1941–1950; in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam), which is a self-portrait, a portrait of her father and of her son Edgar, in which she unites both realism and a sense of symbolism.

"[citation needed] Toorop had lived at many different places, but from 1932 on she resided in Bergen, North Holland, a town she'd previously had her home between 1912-1915 and 1922–1926.

One of her paintings featured in the exhibition called "How Van Gogh Came to Groningen," which opened at the Groninger Museum in November 2024, and which considered the circles of artists, art fans, and collectors who generated early Dutch interest in the works of Vincent Van Gogh.