World Paintings

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida

Seville, The Dance, 1915, oil on canvas.

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida

The Cathedral of Burgos in the Snow, 1910, oil on canvas, 265.43 cm x 209.55 cm, Museo Sorolla, Spain.

Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida

Children in the Sea, 1909.

Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida

Three Sails, 1903, oil on canvas, 96.52 x 137.80cm, sold for a private collection in 2008.

The Spanish painter, born in Valencia, 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 sunlight of his native land. His best works, painted in the open air, vividly portray the sunny seacoast of Valencia.

He drew his inspiration from the dazzling light on the waters by his home, and his beach scenes are marked by sharp contrasts of light and shade, brilliant colours, and vigorous brushstrokes.

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida  

Beach at Valencia (Afternoon Sun), 1908, oil on canvas.

Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla is sometimes called an Impressionist, an inaccurate label but an inevitable comparison. Despite the similarities, Sorolla was actually more of a realist, or a “Sorollaist”, than an adherent of the Impressionists’ ideals and principles. His canvases are flooded with sunlight and the effects of sun and shadow on people, objects, landscapes and particularly on the surface of water, often portrayed in paintings of the sun-drenched beaches in his native Valencia.

Sorolla was particularly fascinated with the play of sunlight on cloth: clothing, towels, sheets or sails, as well as scenes of young children playing in the sunlight on the beach. He was prolific, painted rapidly and often felt free to leave areas of his canvas unfinished or rendered with a few quick strokes of color. When it came to color, Sorolla was a master of defying convention, juxtaposing colors that ordinary painters of his day would never have placed together, in some ways anticipating the Modedrnist movement that would eventually shove him and many other important realists into ill-deserved obscurity.