Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida
Sorolla is one of the most outstanding Spanish painters and a great artist of luminism who knew how to convey scenes of Valencia’s Malvarrosa beach and its Mediterranean Sea through his painting like no other.
Birth of Joaquín Sorolla
Valencia 1863-Cercedilla (Madrid) 1923
Baptism Record
«At the parish church of Santa Catalina Mártir, on the twenty-eighth of February, 1863: I, Rafael Vicente Soler, Vicar of the same, solemnly baptized Joaquín, who was born yesterday at five in the morning, legitimate son of Joaquín Sorolla, a merchant native of Cantavieja, and María Concepción Bastida.»
Outdoor Painter
Pradilla, director of the Spanish Academy in Rome (1885), was the one who told a young Sorolla to «counteract the excessive ease of his execution by painting with his left hand.»
Painting the Malvarrosa
One of this painter’s main tasks was to interpret scenes of Valencia’s beach, first El Cabañal and then La Malvarrosa.
Probably his best works are those he painted on Malvarrosa beach: children bathing, oxen pulling boats out of the sea, women strolling… All of them reflect the splendor of the nature of the Valencian region and more specifically «its sea.» He is fundamentally an outdoor artist.
Although he fixed his residence in Madrid in 1890, for three decades, he spent summers in Valencia. He always returned to Malvarrosa beach, which he never ceased to dream of, and unlike the rest of his paintings, he preferred to hang the seascapes of this beach on the walls of his Madrid studio.
Sorolla as Seen by Experts
There are many scholars and experts who have thoroughly studied the work of this great artist and who provide us with fundamental information to understand his work.
Bernardino de Pantorba – Sorolla, Biographical and Critical Study.
«His strength lies in the paintings painted under the summer sun, in front of the glistening sea, caressed by the salty air. The air, the sea, and the sun command with firm authority in his works. How he managed, step by step, in a deep study, to capture all its finesse; how he fully developed his acute vision of color, his lively grace of drawing, his skill and speed of execution unmatched, we can see it by comparing ‘the return of fishing’ and his other paintings of the summer of 1894, with those painted in 1916, the last year the master worked on the Valencian beach and placing between these and those, in chronological order, to follow the course of his technical evolution, the most significant canvases of the time that elapses between both years.
Of the paintings executed before 1906, five: ‘Sewing the Sail’, ‘Eating in the Boat’, ‘Sad Heritage’, ‘Summer’, and ‘Afternoon Sun’, which must be considered separately, not only for their importance and fame, but because they mark milestones in Sorolla’s painting evolution.»
«The Return of Fishing,» 2 meters wide by 3 meters long. Acquired by the French state for 6,000 francs. That same summer he also paints, ‘They still say fish is expensive!’
These three appellations earned him, which nobody disputes: painter of Valencia, painter of the sun, painter of the sea.»
According to Gil Fillol:
«The influence of Sorolla has been so extraordinary and decisive that we dare say that all the eminent figures of national painting have been created under the shelter of his art. As a consequence, some: Anglada, for example; as a reaction, others: Zuloaga, perhaps.»
Amalio Gimeno, in his academic response speech to Sorolla’s (Madrid, 1924).
«Sorolla had a easily impressionable view of everything that moves in the world, and as what moves the most is light, changing at every moment, it was light that inspired his best paintings. Only the powerful attraction of his senses to it elevated him above the common level. His brain was openly phototropic. The sun attracted him, and he boldly captured the sun, borrowing its bright light, which he handled at will.»
Valencia Beach, Morning Light (1908)
Stroll by the Sea (1909)
Malvarrosa Beach
Malvarrosa Beach is a beach in Valencia. Its name, as well as the neighborhood next to it, dates back to 1848.
Originally, Malvarrosa was a fishing neighborhood, a somewhat marshy area where fishermen’s cabins were built. In this area, there was a productive orchard that caught the interest of the French botanist and perfumer Félix Robillard, who settled in Valencia and bought land to plant a field of aromatic herbs, the malvarrosa, and thus distill perfumes with the scent of this type of geranium.
