27-11 Sorolla (1863-1923) - Spanish Master of Light

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (pronounced Sir-roy-a, 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 characterised by a dexterous representation of the people and landscape under the bright sunlight of his native land and sunlit water.

He was born in Valencia, Spain, the eldest child of a tradesman and his wife Concepción Bastida. His sister Concha was born a year later and in 1985 both children were orphaned when their parents died possibly of cholera. They were cared for by their maternal aunt and her husband who was a locksmith.

Sorolla was first trained in art when he was 9 and had a number of teachers until he travelled to Madrid when he was 18 to study the masters in the Prado. Following military service he obtained a grant to spend four years studying in Rome. He then travelled to Paris where he encountered modern painting. Jules Bastien-Lepage was a particular influence. In 1888 (aged 25) he returned to Valencia to marry Clotilde García del Castillo, whom he had first met in 1879, while working in her father's studio. She became his muse and the subject of many of his paintings. They had a passionate relationship and a happy marriage. When they were apart, he would write every day often enclosing a flower in his letter. He wrote, “All my love is focused on you. Despite my great love for our children, you are more, much more than them for so many reasons that there is no need to mention. You are my body, my life, my mind, my perpetual ideal”. By 1895, they would have 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 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.

Sorolla other great love was Valencia where he returned every year to paint beach scenes and captured the blazing Mediterranean sunlight. He painted outside and many of his canvases still have grains of sand embedded in them.

His exceptional artistic talent was recognised very early on and he exhibited in Madrid in his early teens and his first large history painting was bought by the Spanish government in 1884 before he was 21. He had an extraordinary technical ability and can represent any figure, texture, object or fall of light that he wants. Photography played in important role in the way he saw the world although he painted direct from nature rather than from photographs.

The last exhibition of Sorolla in London was 1908, not a success, not many were sold, no commissions but he met Archer Huntingdon, his father had built a railroad and he wanted to establish himself as an American patron. He invites him to do an exhibition the following year in New York at the Hispanic Society. The exhibition was a sensation, they were lined up around the block in the snow. He sells 195 paintings, receives 25 portrait commissions including being invited to the White House to paint the President Taft. All the museums of America had to have a Sorolla and that year the met bought this painting. He comes back from New York a very wealthy man.

The vision of Spain almost killed Sorolla. The difficulty, intensity and constant travel from 1910 to 1920 when he has a very serious stroke and he never paints again. He died in 1923 and was buried like a state hero. His body was transported in a cortège by train to Valencia, where it was greeted by thousands and there, in his hometown, he was buried in full state pomp.

Now it was over, his work and the great project. His great project was installed in 1926 but was greeted within difference. The world had changed. In the 1920 you thought of Dali and Miro not Sorolla. After all these decades of ignoring Sorolla we need to reimagine him again to see where he fits into a more complex story of modern Spanish art.

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