He bequeathed all his works to his state: who is Joaquín Sorolla?

Although he is best known today for the scenes of daily life he portrays in sea and beach landscapes, he has dealt with a wide variety of themes, especially focusing on people in his native Spain.

Birth of a painter

Joaquín Sorolla Bastida was born on February 27, 1863, in Nueva, a former fishing quarter of Valencia, Spain. His family, who were cloth merchants, died two years later during the cholera epidemic in the region. Orphaned at a very young age, Sorolla was raised with his younger sister by their aunt Isabel Bastida and her husband José Piqueres. José, a locksmith master who makes iron fittings for boats, decided that young Sorolla was not doing well in school and decided to teach him his trade. However, noticing Sorolla's interest and talent in the arts, the headmaster made him attend evening classes at the Craftsman's School in Valencia, given by the sculptor Cayetano Capuz and the painter José Estruch.

Getting to know the photographer's son

It was a great opportunity for Sorolla to be close friends with Tono, the son of Antonio García Peris, a well-known Valencian photographer at school. Knowing his family's financial difficulties, Antonio García became his mentor as he was impressed by this young talent; He paid for his education in exchange for retouching his photographs and allowed him to use his workshop for painting. Sorolla won the San Carlos School of Fine Arts in Valencia in 1878 by working hard from that day on to this generous act. Here he received an academic education based on the painting of the masters of Spanish art, especially the technique of Diego Velázquez and El Greco.

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (Valencian: Joaquim Sorolla i Bastida, 27 February 1863 – 10 August 1923) was a Spanish Valencian 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.

Although he had studied the traditional masters before him with great care, he believed that he could offer something different to the art world. He had also lost several local exhibitions he had attended, as his work dealt with non-classical themes. With the thought of using his luck outside the borders of his country, he decided to go to Italy by winning a four-year scholarship. The intricacies of Classical and Renaissance art he learned in Rome would be of great importance to his artistic development. But undoubtedly the turning point was his first visit to Paris in 1885. In this city, he met Impressionism, which was seen as a way of life by his contemporaries. On his return to Spain, he took with him the vivid light and thick brushstrokes of Impressionism.

Return to Spain

It was not only because Sorolla completed his apprenticeship and returned to Madrid that he thought it would make his career as a painter easier; In 1888, he married Clotilde García, whom he met while working in the studio of his mentor, Antonio García, and started a family. Thanks to this marriage, he started to make a name for himself in the art community and started to take part in many national and international exhibitions. For the next ten years, his work was featured in galleries in major cities such as Madrid, Paris, Venice, Munich, Berlin, and Chicago.

His first striking success was the painting Another Marguerite (1892), which won him a gold medal at the National Exhibition in Madrid, then first prize at the Chicago International Exhibition, and was later donated to the University of Washington Museum. Thanks to this painting, he had great success both with the critics and the public, and made him realize what kind of art he was looking for as a painter.

Sorolla's searches resulted in two new themes. The first of these was Social Realism, which became the fashion of the period as it replaced the theme of history in competitions. The second was his sea and beach paintings, in which he combined everyday scenes of Mediterranean life in landscapes, which would become the main feature of his works since 1894 when he started painting outdoors under the influence of Impressionism. These paintings were a style described as "Luminism" or "Neo-Impressionism", characterized by the flawless examination of the sun's rays hitting the Mediterranean soil and transforming them into soft brushstrokes, in which the bright whites added an extraordinary warmth and calmness to the scene.

Last years

With his mature style and themes, his first solo exhibitions in Paris in 1906 and London in 1908 were praised by critics. Among the recipients of his exhibition in London is Archer Milton Huntington, founder of The Hispanic Society of America; In addition to purchasing a number of his works, Huntington invited him to America to become a member of their community. His monographic exhibition, which he held at the Hispanic Community of America in New York in 1909, was visited by approximately 160,000 people for a month, praised by critics, and half of his exhibits were sold. Overjoyed with the attention Sorolla received, Huntington offered the biggest project of his life: decorating the great hall of the institution's library with panels representing different Spanish regions.

After Sorolla signed the contract, he began to travel all over Spain in search of the traditional line of the countryside. He created the basis of the Spanish Vision by capturing the traditions, clothes, and landscapes of the provinces with his drawings for seven years. Although he was struggling with health problems when he finished the series in 1919, he thought he had achieved one of the greatest achievements of his life. After suffering a stroke while painting a portrait in his garden in Madrid in 1920, he spent the last three years of his life without painting, living with memories and longings. When he died at his home on August 10, 1923, all his works were inherited by the state, and in 1932 his house was converted into the Sorolla Museum.