Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (Valencian: Joaquim Sorolla i Bastida, 27
February 1863 – 10 August 1923) was a Spanish painter. Sorolla excelled in the
painting of portraits, landscapes and monumental works of social and historical
themes. His most typical works are characterized by a dexterous representation
of the people and landscape under the bright sunlight of Spain and sunlit
water.
Early life
Joaquín
Sorolla was born on 27 February 1863 in Valencia, Spain. Sorolla was the eldest
child born to a tradesman, also named Joaquín 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,[3] and then under
a succession of teachers including Cayetano Capuz, Salustiano Asenjo. At the
age of eighteen he travelled 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, where he was welcomed by and found stability in the example of
Francisco Pradilla, the director of the Spanish Academy in Rome. A long sojourn
to Paris in 1885 provided his first exposure to modern painting; of special
influence were exhibitions of Jules Bastien-Lepage and Adolph von Menzel. Back
in Rome he studied with José Benlliure, Emilio Sala, and José Villegas Cordero.
In 1888,
Sorolla returned to Valencia to marry Clotilde García del Castillo, whom he had
first met in 1879, while working in her father's studio. By 1895, they had
three children together: Maria, born in 1890, Joaquín, born in 1892, and Elena,
born in 1895. In 1890, they moved to Madrid, and for the next decade Sorolla's
efforts as an artist were focused 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.
His first
striking success was achieved with Another Marguerite (1892), 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. 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) 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.
Sorolla
painted two masterpieces in 1897 linking art and science: Portrait of Dr.
Simarro at the microscope and A Research. 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 investigating and, in addition, it is the triumph of
naturalism, as it recreates the indoor environment of the laboratory, catching
the luminous atmosphere produced by the artificial reddish-yellow light of a
gas burner that contrasts with the weak mauvish afternoon light that shines
through the window. These paintings may be among the most outstanding world
paintings of this genre.
Sad
Inheritance
An even
greater turning point in Sorolla's career was marked by the painting and
exhibition of Sad Inheritance (1899, seen at right), 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.[8] 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.[9] 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.
Maturity
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.
Sorolla's
work is often exhibited together with that of his contemporaries and friends,
John Singer Sargent and Anders Zorn.
Portraits
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), a reference to Las Meninas which grouped
his wife and children in the foreground, the painter reflected, at work, in a
distant mirror. 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).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,This portrait, which was
painted at the White House, is on permanent display at the Taft Museum of Art
in Cincinnati, Ohio.
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), but so did Spanish royalty, for the Portrait of King Alfonso XIII in a
Hussar's Uniform (1907). For Portrait of Mr. Louis Comfort Tiffany (1911), the
American artist posed seated at his easel in his Long Island garden, surrounded
by extravagant flowers. The conceit reaches its high point in My Wife and
Daughters in the Garden (1910, see gallery below), 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.
The
Provinces of Spain
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. These 14
magnificent 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 dominated 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.
Legacy
Sorolla's
influence on some other Spanish painters, such as Alberto Pla y Rubio and Julio
Romero de Torres, was so noted that they are described as
"sorollista."
After his
death, Sorolla's widow, Clotilde García del Castillo, left many of his
paintings to the Spanish public. The paintings eventually formed the collection
that is now known as the Museo Sorolla, which was the artist's house in Madrid.
The museum opened in 1932.
Sorolla's
work is represented in museums throughout Spain, Europe, America, and in many
private collections in Europe and America.In 1933, J. Paul Getty purchased ten
Impressionist beach scenes made by Sorolla, several of which are now housed in
the J. Paul Getty Museum.
In 1960,
Sorolla, el pintor de la luz, a short documentary written and directed by
Manuel Domínguez was presented at the Cannes Film Festival.
The Spanish
National Dance Company honored the painter's The Provinces of Spain by
producing a ballet Sorolla based on the paintings.
Valencia
high-speed railway station has been named after Sorolla.
Temporary
exhibitions
In 2007
many of his works were exhibited at the Petit Palais in Paris, alongside those
of John Singer Sargent, a contemporary who painted in a similarly
impressionist-influenced manner. In 2009, there was a special exhibition of his
works at the Prado in Madrid, and in 2010, the exhibition visited the Oscar
Niemeyer Museum in Curitiba, Brazil.
From 5
December 2011 to 10 March 2012, several of Sorolla's works were exhibited in
Queen Sofía Spanish Institute, in New York. This exhibition included pieces
used during Sorolla's eight-year research for Vision of Spain.
An
exhibition titled Sorolla & America explored Sorolla's unique relationship
with the United States in the early twentieth century. The exhibition opened at
the Meadows Museum at SMU in Dallas (13 December 2013 – 19 April 2014). From
there it traveled to the San Diego Museum of Art (30 May – 26 August 2014) and
then to Fundación MAPFRE in Madrid (23 September 2014 – 11 January 2015).
In 2016 the
Munich Kunsthalle held a major Sorolla exhibition.
In 2019 the
National Gallery, London, held a major temporary Sorolla exhibition, titled
Sorolla: Spanish Master of Light.
_in_Black_MET_DP168810.jpg)
.webp)
