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Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida
Spanish, 1863 - 1923
Spanish painter. He studied (1878–80) at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Valencia, initially also attending the Escuela de Artesanos. He was influenced by the work of the previous generation of Valencian painters, especially Francisco Domingo y Marqués, who drew his attention to 17th-century Spanish realism. Also important at this stage in Sorolla’s development was the impact of the work of Ignacio Pinazo Camarlech, whose paintings prompted Sorolla to work out of doors, and that of Emilio Sala Francés. Sorolla first visited Madrid in 1881, for the Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes. In the Prado at that time he made many copies from the works of Velázquez and Juan de Ribera; he was interested particularly in Velázquez’s treatment of light and in the vigour of execution of Ribera. A capacity to combine contemporary with traditional approaches is to be found in his 2nd of May (1884; Madrid, Mus. Sorolla), where Pinazo Camarlech’s plein-air principles are applied to a traditional historical composition on the theme of the heroic defence of Madrid against Napoleon’s troops. From this point onwards Sorolla started to seek out his own path between idealizing and realistic tendencies.
Sorolla won a study grant in 1885, and he left Spain for Rome; he spent a good deal of time, however, during the following years, in Paris. He was in contact with macchiaioli painters in Italy, but was otherwise not much impressed by Italian art of the time. In Rome he painted contemporary subjects such as The Workshop (1885–6; Madrid, Mus. Sorolla), but his major concern there was a traditional large Entombment (1887; Madrid, Mus. Sorolla) for the Exposición Nacional in Madrid, a work that he believed to be a failure. In it he drew away from his usual realism in the depiction of light, instead using it as a symbolic element that was to draw attention to the seriousness of the subject.
Sorolla returned to Madrid c. 1889, and his work became more assured and his progress less erratic. An important contact in the Madrid art world was José Jiménez Aranda, whose rather melodramatic tendencies were alien to Sorolla but whose stress on preparatory drawing helped him to see the importance of this discipline. Another was Aureliano Beruete y Moret, whose social contacts facilitated Sorolla’s entry into the higher social circles that he was to record during his later years, although he never became a portrait painter in the strict sense. From this point onwards, Sorolla consciously approached the problem of light as his main concern and used it to startling, varied and very apt effect in a wide range of contexts. White Slave Trade (1895; Madrid, Mus. Sorolla), a work of social realism, takes on a luminous beauty in its study of the light-drenched tones of the subjects’ skirts, and in the interior scene of An Investigation (Dr Simarro in his Laboratory) (1897; Madrid, Mus. Sorolla), the focus of light on the doctor’s hands emphasizes these as the centre of the group’s attention. In the beach scene, Valencian Ropemakers (1897; Madrid, Mus. Sorolla), there is an effect of dazzle and heat, emphasized by the brusque cropping.
Sorolla’s success at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900 brought him into direct contact with northern Post-Impressionist painting, for example that of the Swede Anders Zorn with which his work had much in common. From 1906, when he painted extensively during the summer at Biarritz, Sorolla established himself as a master of the beach scene. In the picture of his wife preparing a camera to take a photograph (Snapshot, 1906; Madrid, Mus. Sorolla), he successfully captured the brilliant Atlantic light in a way found also in paintings from other locations, such as Bathing at La Granja (1907; Madrid, Mus. Sorolla), with its brilliantly evocative use of dappled shade and water seen through the trees. Sorolla progressively dispensed with preparatory drawing, forming volumes by means of colour alone. By this time he was becoming known internationally, in terms of exhibitions and sales of his work, and his subject-matter often reflected the widening sphere of his activity, as in a series of gouache sketches of the New York street seen, in 1909, from his hotel room. Sorolla’s connection with New York was strengthened in 1911, when he reached an agreement with the Hispanic Society of America to paint a series of decorative scenes, 70 m long, for its library, recording the costumes and occupations of people from the various regions of Spain. He worked on these pictures (in situ) from 1912 to 1919, seeking to record a Spain not contaminated by the various Romantic myths that had coloured so many previous painters’ accounts, but he produced a view of the nation that was still markedly folkloric in its approach. Stylistically the New York commission represented little advance on his earlier work. The works of Sorolla’s last years are marked by a greater intimacy and focus on detail, especially of his immediate surroundings, a common theme being his own garden, as in the decorative Detail of the Garden of the Sorolla House (1916; Madrid, Mus. Sorolla).
Andrés Ubeda de los Cobos. "Sorolla y Bastida, Joaquín." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T079824 (accessed April 16, 2012).
Person TypeIndividual
Flemish, 1575 - 1632
