Toto Koopman

Catharina "Toto" Johanna Anne Koopman (28 October 1908 – 27 August 1991) was a Dutch-Javanese model, intelligence agent, gallerist and archaeologist. During the Second World War, Koopman worked as a spy for both the Italian Resistance and the Allied powers and was deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp. Koopman later settled in London and established the Hanover Gallery with her partner Erica Brausen.

Early life and education Koopman was born Catharina Johanna Anne Koopman in Salatiga, Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) to Jan George Koopman (1878–1941) and Catharina Johanna Westrik (1880–1933). Koopman's Dutch father was a Colonel in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army, and her mother was of Chinese Indonesian descent.

Career In Paris, Koopman worked as a house model for Coco Chanel but quit after only six months. She worked for the designers Rochas, Mainbocher and Madeleine Vionnet, appeared regularly in Vogue Paris and was photographed by Edward Steichen and George Hoyningen-Huene.

Koopman had a small part in the film The Private Life of Don Juan and although this was cut from the final production she still attended the film's premiere with Tallulah Bankhead, who introduced her to Lord Beaverbrook. Although Beaverbrook was thirty years her senior, he and Koopman began, in 1934, an affair that lasted some years. He was happy to pay for her travels throughout Europe in the 1930s and she often attended opera performances in Germany and Italy. She made a donation of books to the Institute of Archaeology in London. In 1959 Koopman and Brausen bought a property on the island of Panarea where they built six villas amongst extensive gardens and entertained very lavishly. They continued to live together until Koopman's death in August 1991, eighteen months before Brausen's death.