Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923)
La playa de Valencia/ The beach at Valencia, c. 1908
Oil on canvas
50 × 65.5 cm (19.6 × 25.7 in)
Private collection
Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923)
El baño del caballo/ The Horse's Bath, c. 1909
Oil on canvas
Height: 205 cm (80.7 in); Width: 250 cm (98.4 in)
Sorolla Museum
Sorolla was the eldest child born to a tradesman, also named Joaquin Sorolla, and his wife, Concepción Bastida. His sister, Concha, was born a year later. In August 1865, both children were orphaned when their parents died, possibly from cholera. They were thereafter cared for by their maternal aunt and uncle, a locksmith.
He received his initial art education at the age of 9 in his native town, and then under a succession of teachers. At the age of eighteen he traveled to Madrid, vigorously studying master paintings in the Museo del Prado. After completing his military service, Sorolla, at age twenty-two, obtained a grant which enabled a four-year term to study painting in Rome, Italy. A long sojourn to Paris in 1885 provided his first exposure to modern painting.
Joaquín Sorolla
Running along the Beach, Valencia, c. 1908
Museum of Fine Arts, Oviedo, Asturias, Spain
Sorolla’s other great love was for his home city of Valencia. Despite living in Madrid, he returned to Valencia every year, drawn to the intense light and broad horizon of the coast. He grew a reputation for beach scenes, which he painted endlessly, and had an uncanny ability for capturing the effects of blazing Mediterranean sunlight. Many of these pictures, often large canvases, were executed 'en plein air', as evidenced by the grains of sand embedded in their densely painted surfaces. More on this painting
In 1888, Sorolla returned to Valencia to marry Clotilde García del Castillo They moved to Madrid, and for the next decade Sorolla's efforts as an artist were focussed mainly on the production of large canvases of orientalist, mythological, historical, and social subjects, for display in salons and international exhibitions in Madrid, Paris, Venice, Munich, Berlin, and Chicago.
Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923)
Otra Margarita!/ Another Marguerite!, c. 1892
Oil on canvas
Height: 51.2 in (130.1 cm); Width: 78.7 in (200 cm)
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum
Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida based this composition on an incident he witnessed on a third-class railway carriage between Madrid and Valencia, where two civil guards were accompanying a female prisoner who was being brought to justice. The name Margarita might be read as a reference to a slang term for prostitutes used in Valencia at the time. Even more significantly, the name suggests a connection to Goethe’s tragic play Faust, in which Margaret (also called Gretchen) commits infanticide after being seduced by the protagonist Faust. Sorolla used meticulous detail here to augment the misery of the scene, painting from models in an actual railway car rather than in a studio. The spartan space heightens the prisoner’s isolation, and intense sunlight highlights her face even while she slumps over in shame or defeat. Almost theatrical in its character, this painting was a milestone in Sorolla’s career. It made his reputation in the United States, earning a Medal of Honor at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. More on this painting
His first striking success was achieved with Another Marguerite (1892) (See above), which was awarded a gold medal at the National Exhibition in Madrid, then first prize at the Chicago International Exhibition, where it was acquired and subsequently donated to the Washington University Museum in St. Louis, Missouri.
Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923)
La vuelta de la pesca/ The Return from Fishing, circa 1894
Oil on canvas
Height: 265 cm (104.3 in); Width: 403.5 cm (13.2 ft)
Musée d'Orsay
The Return from Fishing is a precisely detailed account of the complex, strenous, dangerous and above all primitive working conditions of the local fishermen of Valencia, who still used teams of oxen to haul their boats up the beach. While you’re relishing the warm sunlight filling the huge sail, consider how difficult this task is, and how dangerous it must have been to work with those powerful animals, and several tons of wooden boat hull, in wind and waves.
Sorolla finds not only himself, but also the wild and constant light that he has always longed for and pursued since his beginnings in Assisi. This painting is one of Sorolla's first international successes. Being acquired by the French government, the work is awarded the Second Class Medal in the Paris Salon of 1895. With this work, Sorolla expresses his artistic ideal. More on this painting
He soon rose to general fame and became the acknowledged head of the modern Spanish school of painting. His picture The Return from Fishing (1894) (See above) was much admired at the Paris Salon and was acquired by the state for the Musée du Luxembourg. It indicated the direction of his mature output.
Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923)
Portrait of Dr Simarro at the Microscope, c. 1897
Oil on canvas Edit this at Wikidata
Height: 80 cm (31.4 in) Width: 100 cm (39.3 in) Edit this at Wikidata
Private collection
The history of this picture, says Sorolla: "A Research, if it can be called history, is so natural and simple that it can be told in a few words. I had been working on the portrait of Dr. Simarro in his laboratory. I often visited the home of my fellow countryman and I attended, as a curious spectator, the scientific investigations to which the doctor was dedicated, with the enthusiastic and assiduous cooperation of his colleagues and disciples. I know it is not usual for a painter to visit the home of the person he is portraying, but my studio is a reserved place, which I only use if it is absolutely unavoidable. Whenever possible, I paint things where they are, and people in their environment, in their own atmosphere, the only way so to paint them so they will turn out as they really are, naturally, intimately, and not as if they were on a visit and in an artificial setting..." More on this painting
Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923)
Research, c. 1897
Oil on canvas
Height: 122 cm (48 in); Width: 151 cm (59.4 in)
Sorolla Museum
This painting shows Dr Luis Simarro Lacabra, the renowned psychiatrist and member of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, at work in his laboratory with some of his assistants and fellow scientists. The scene was captured by Sorolla on one of his visits to the house of Doctor Simarro, a great art lover and close lifelong friend of Sorolla. Impressed by the intent observation of the doctor’s expectant disciples and colleagues, the idea for the painting occurred to Sorolla and he began to paint it straight away, going back each evening to the laboratory. The scene is lit by a single light source within the painting which throws the figures into relief and at the same time creates a rich chiaroscuro of warm shadows where Sorolla can delight in his passion for light in all its variations. More on this painting
Sorolla painted these two masterpieces in 1897 linking art and science: Portrait of Dr. Simarro at the microscope and A Research (See above). These paintings were presented at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts held in Madrid in that year and Sorolla won the Prize of Honor. Here, he presents his friend Simarro as a man of science who transmits his wisdom. These paintings may be among the most outstanding world paintings of this genre.
Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923)
Sad Inheritance, c. 1899
Oil on canvas
Height: 210 cm (82.6 in); Width: 285 cm (112.2 in)
Bancaja, Valencia
Here, social drama, conceived in the open air at the Cabanal’s seaside of Valencia, naturally integrates light and landscape. Among the group of blind, crazy, crippled, and leprous children, he shows us, with striking realism, the naked body of the child struck polio in the center of the picture, who, with great difficulty, is trying to bathe at the beach with the help of a monk of the Orden Hospitalaria de San Juan de Dios. More on this painting
An even greater turning point in Sorolla's career was marked by the painting and exhibition of Sad Inheritance in 1899 (See above), an extremely large canvas, highly finished for public consideration. The subject was a depiction of crippled children bathing at the sea in Valencia, under the supervision of a monk. They are the victims of hereditary syphilis the title implies, perhaps. Campos has suggested that the polio epidemic that struck the land of Valencia some years earlier is present, possibly for the first time in the history of painting, through the image of two affected children. The painting earned Sorolla his greatest official recognition, the Grand Prix and a medal of honor at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1900, and the medal of honor at the National Exhibition in Madrid in 1901.
A series of preparatory oil sketches for Sad Inheritance were painted with the greatest luminosity and bravura, and foretold an increasing interest in shimmering light and of a medium deftly handled. Sorolla thought well enough of these sketches that he presented two of them as gifts to American artists; one to John Singer Sargent, the other to William Merritt Chase. After this painting Sorolla never returned to a theme of such overt social consciousness.
The exhibit at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900 won him a medal of honour and his nomination as Knight of the Legion of Honour. Within the next few years Sorolla was honoured as a member of the Fine Art Academies of Paris, Lisbon, and Valencia, and as a Favourite Son of Valencia.
A special exhibition of his works—figure subjects, landscapes and portraits—at the Galeries Georges Petit in Paris in 1906 eclipsed all his earlier successes and led to his appointment as Officer of the Legion of Honour. The show included nearly 500 works, early paintings as well as recent sun-drenched beach scenes, landscapes, and portraits, a productivity which amazed critics and was a financial triumph. Though subsequent large-scale exhibitions in Germany and London were greeted with more restraint, while in England in 1908 Sorolla met Archer Milton Huntington, who made him a member of The Hispanic Society of America in New York City, and invited him to exhibit there in 1909. The exhibition comprised 356 paintings, 195 of which sold. Sorolla spent five months in America and painted more than twenty portraits.
Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923)
My Family, c. 1901
Oil on canvas
185 x 159 cm
Valencia City Council (Spain)
In Sorolla’s painting we see his image, palette in hand, in a mirror in the background. The main figures in the painting were those of his family. His wife Clotilde stands to the left in a long red dress along with her children. Elena, the youngest, sits on the chair was five years old at the time. Their nine-year old son Joaquín sits on a stool sketching a picture of his sister whilst their elder daughter, Maria, who would have been eleven when her father completed the work, holds the board which her brother is using to support his sketch. More on this painting
Although formal portraiture was not Sorolla's genre of preference, because it tended to restrict his creative appetites and could reflect his lack of interest in his subjects, the acceptance of portrait commissions proved profitable, and the portrayal of his family was irresistible. Sometimes the influence of Velázquez was uppermost, as in My Family (1901) (See above), a reference to Las Meninas which grouped his wife and children in the foregroundr.
Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida
Mrs. Ira Nelson Morris and Her Children, c. 1911
Oil on canvas
221.2 cm (87.09 in.) x 169.3 cm (66.65 in.)
Hispanic Society of America, New York City, United States
Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923)
Portrait of Mr. Taft, President of the United States, c. 1909
Oil on canvas
150 × 80 cm (59 × 31.4 in)
Taft Museum of Art
At other times the desire to compete with his friend John Singer Sargent was evident, as in Portrait of Mrs. Ira Nelson Morris and her children (1911) (See above). A series of portraits produced in the United States in 1909, commissioned through the Hispanic Society of America, was capped by the Portrait of Mr. Taft, President of the United States (See above). This portrait, which was painted at the White House, is on permanent display at the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923)
Maria at La Granja, c. 1907
Oil on canvas
67 1/8 in. x 33 1/2 in. (170.5 cm x 85.09 cm)
San Diego Museum
Here Maria stands as a beautiful young woman one can sense the strong bond Sorolla shared with his daughter. Maria at La Granja gives one the feeling that the image portrays Maria as her father always saw her.
Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923)
King Alfonso XIII in a Hussar's Uniform, c. 1907
Oil on canvas
Height: 208 cm (81.8 in); Width: 108.5 cm (42.7 in)
Royal Palace of Madrid
The posthumous son of Alfonso XII, Alfonso XIII (1886-1941) was proclaimed king at his birth, although his mother, Queen Maria Christina, ruled as regent until he reached the age of 16. Alfonso himself ruled from 1902 until 1931 when, refusing to abdicate when elections returned an overwhelming vote for a republic, he left the country, dying in exile in Rome in 1941. More on this painting
Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923)
Louis Comfort Tiffany, c. 1911
Oil on canvas
150.5 x 225.4 cm
Hispanic Society of America, New York
Sorolla travelled to Tiffany home repeatedly from 4 to 15 May 1911, painting the portrait in one of the estate’s gardens, with Tiffany at his easel, and his border terrier, Funny, at his side. The bravura execution of the picture is completely Impressionist, with the composition balancing multiple shades of yellow and blue against bands of whites and gray-greens. Priscilla Muller has pointed out Sorolla’s insistence that “whites are never solely white,” and indeed, every white in the painting is mixed with color, with the important exception of the cuff on the hand holding the paint brush, plus the foresail of a boat on Cold Spring Harbor in the background.
The studied elegance of Tiffany’s attire and centered formality of the presentation of the sitter contrasts with the casual effect of the “artist at work” conceit and relaxed pose, as though Tiffany were pausing in mid-brushstroke to reply to a comment from the viewer.
Tiffany paid Sorolla the astonishing sum of $8,000 for the picture—approximately $200,000 in 2018 dollars. Sorolla, however, bought three bronze-and-glass chandeliers for his new house in Madrid; thus, the picture ended up being part of an artistic exchange of a more tangible kind. More on this painting
Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923)
My Wife and Daughters in the Garden, c. 1910
Portrait of Clotilde del Castillo and their daughters
Oil on canvas
I have no further description, at this time
The appearance of sunlight could be counted on to rouse his interest, and it was outdoors where he found his ideal portrait settings. Thus, not only did his daughter pose standing in a sun-dappled landscape for María at La Granja (1907) (See above), but so did Spanish royalty, for the Portrait of King Alfonso XIII in a Hussar's Uniform (1907) (See above). For Portrait of Mr. Louis Comfort Tiffany (1911) (See above). The conceit reaches its high point in My Wife and Daughters in the Garden (1910) (See above), in which the idea of traditional portraiture gives way to the sheer fluid delight of a painting constructed with thick passages of color, Sorolla's love of family and sunlight merged.
Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923)
Castilla, the feast of Bread, c. 1913
Vision of Spain (formerly, The Provinces of Spain)
Oil on canvas
Height: 351 cm (11.5 ft); Width: 1,352 cm (14.7 yd)
Hispanic Society of America
Joaquin Sorolla (1863–1923)
Sevilla. The Nazarenes/ Seville, Holy Week. Penitents, c. 1914
Vision of Spain
Oil on canvas
Height: 351 cm (11.5 ft); Width: 300.5 cm (118.3 in)
Hispanic Society of America
Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923)
Aragón, c. 1914
Vision of Spain (formerly, The Provinces of Spain)
Oil on canvas
Height: 485 cm (15.9 ft); Width: 349 cm (11.4 ft)
Hispanic Society of America
Joaquin Sorolla (1863–1923)
Navarra, c. 1914
Vision of Spain
Oil on canvas
Height: 349 cm (11.4 ft); Width: 230 cm (90.5 in)
Hispanic Society of America
Joaquin Sorolla (1863–1923)
Guipúzcoa/ Bowling, c. 1914
Vision of Spain
Oil on canvas
Height: 350 cm (11.4 ft); Width: 231.5 cm (91.1 in)
Hispanic Society of America
Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923)
Andalucía, El Encierro, c. 1914
Vision of Spain (formerly, The Provinces of Spain)
Oil and canvas
Height: 351 cm (11.5 ft) Width: 752 cm (24.6 ft)
Hispanic Society of America
Joaquin Sorolla (1863–1923)
Sevilla, The Dance, c. 1915
Vision of Spain Edit this at Wikidata
Oil on canvas
Height: 351 cm (11.5 ft); Width: 302.5 cm (119 in)
Hispanic Society of America
Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923)
Sevilla. Los toreros/ The Bullfighters, c. 1915
Visión de España
Oil on canvas
Height: 351 cm (11.5 ft); Width: 231 cm (90.9 in)
Hispanic Society of America
Joaquin Sorolla (1863–1923)
Galicia. The pilgrimage, c. 1915
Vision of Spain
Oil on canvas
Height: 351 cm (11.5 ft); Width: 300 cm (118.1 in)
Hispanic Society of America
Joaquin Sorolla (1863–1923)
Catalonia. The fish, c. 1915
Vision of Spain Edit this at Wikidata
Oil on canvas
Height: 351 cm (11.5 ft); Width: 485 cm (15.9 ft)
Hispanic Society of America
Joaquin Sorolla (1863–1923)
Valencia. Las grupas, c. 1916
Vision of Spain
Oil on canvas
Height: 351 cm (11.5 ft); Width: 301 cm (118.5 in)
Hispanic Society of America
Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923)
Extremadura, the Market, c. 1917
Vision of Spain (formerly, The Provinces of Spain)
Oil on canvas
Height: 351 cm (11.5 ft); Width: 302 cm (118.8 in)
Hispanic Society of America
Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923)
Elche. El palmeral/ The palm grove, c. 1919
Visión de España
Oil on canvas
Height: 351 cm (11.5 ft); Width: 321 cm (10.5 ft)
Hispanic Society of America
Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923)
Ayamonte, c. 1919
Vision of Spain
Oil on canvas Edit this at Wikidata
Height: 349 cm (11.4 ft); Width: 485 cm (15.9 ft) Edit this at Wikidata
Hispanic Society of America
Early in 1911, Sorolla visited the United States for a second time, and exhibited 152 new paintings at the Saint Louis Art Museum and 161 at the Art Institute of Chicago a few weeks later. Later that year Sorolla met Archie Huntington in Paris and signed a contract to paint a series of oils on life in Spain (See above). These 14 murals, installed to this day in the Hispanic Society of America building in Manhattan, range from 12 to 14 feet in height, and total 227 feet in length. The major commission of his career, it would dominate the later years of Sorolla's life.
Huntington had envisioned the work depicting a history of Spain, but the painter preferred the less specific Vision of Spain, eventually opting for a representation of the regions of the Iberian Peninsula, and calling it The Provinces of Spain. Despite the immensity of the canvases, Sorolla painted all but one en plein air, and travelled to the specific locales to paint them: Navarre, Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, Elche, Seville, Andalusia, Extremadura, Galicia, Guipuzcoa, Castile, Leon, and Ayamonte, at each site painting models posed in local costume. Each mural celebrated the landscape and culture of its region, panoramas composed of throngs of laborers and locals. By 1917 he was, by his own admission, exhausted. He completed the final panel by July 1919.
Sorolla suffered a stroke in 1920, while painting a portrait in his garden in Madrid. Paralysed for over three years, he died on 10 August 1923. He is buried in the Cementeri de Valencia, Spain.
The Sorolla Room, housing the Provinces of Spain at the Hispanic Society of America, opened to the public in 1926. The room closed for remodeling in 2008, and the murals toured museums in Spain for the first time. The Sorolla Room reopened in 2010, with the murals on permanent display. More on Joaquín Sorolla
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