Jacob Toorenvliet trained initially in Leiden under his father Abraham (c.1620-1692), a drawing master and glass painter, who is better known as the first teacher of Frans van Mieris and Matthijs Naiveu. Jacob had a precocious talent for painting and it is known that he was already active as a portraitist by the time of his fifteenth birthday. In 1670 he left for Rome where apparently he made a particular study on the work of Raphael. From 1673 he lived and worked in Venice, where, according to Houbraken he met and married his wife. He is thought to have spent time in Vienna in the late 1670s and by 1680 was back in Holland when he took a pupil, Jacob van der Sluis, in Amsterdam. He returned to Leiden in 1682. Four years later he was admitted to the Guild and became its director in 1703.

Toorenvliet's oeuvre is bound in the tradition of the Leiden fijnschilders and his training under his father no doubt introduced him to the techniques of rendering objects and textures in minute detail. His early output consisted mainly of humble but lively interior scenes with musicians, card-players, smokers and drinkers. These reveal his considerable technical ability. Occasionally, however, he depicted more elegant figures in the style of Frans van Mieris. His pictures are identifiable by a cool grey overall tonality and excellent chiaroscuro and his materials and foods are rendered with great skill.

Museums where examples of the artist's work can be found include:
Aachen, Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum), Berlin, Bordeaux, Budapest, Dresden, Harvard, Karlsruhe (Kunsthalle), Leiden, Prague, San Francisco, Stockholm, Venice and Vienna.