CHRONOLOGY
1876-78
Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida
Born in Valencia on February 27. At the age of two orphaned and taken in by his aunt and uncle.
1876-78
Training in Valencia
Attends drawing classes at the Escuela de Artesanos Valencia, and later entered the Escuela de Fine Arts. There he meets Tono García del Castillo, with whom he strikes up a friendship. His father, the photographer Antonio García Peris, will become Sorolla's patron for a number of years, and with his daughter Clotilde will initiate the painter a relationship of courtship.
1881 - 87
Madrid, Rome, Paris
Sorolla begins to see the world. In 1881 he visited the Prado Museum and was deeply impressed by Velázquez's paintings. In 1884, his painting El grito del Palleter was awarded by the Diputación de Valencia with a pension to study in Rome. Get in touch with the Spanish artists' colony, work and visit museums. There he meets Pedro Gil Moreno de Mora, who will be a great friend all his life. The latter invites him to his home in Paris, where Sorolla stays for six months, working intensely and visiting museums and exhibitions. He is particularly impressed by the works of the naturalist painters Adolf von Menzel and Jules Bastien-Lepage. From that first visit, Sorolla would return frequently to Paris to see what was new in art.
1888 - 90
Marriage and difficult times
Sorolla returns to Valencia and marries Clotilde. They return together to Italy and spend some time in Assisi. There he paints looking for his "true path" in realism while he barely supports himself by selling small paintings and watercolors. In 1889 the couple traveled to Paris to visit the Universal Exposition, and Sorolla was very impressed by the Nordic painters Peder Severin Krøyer and Anders Zorn. They settle definitively in Madrid. In 1890 their first daughter, Maria, was born.
1891-98
Family, work and social realism
In 1892 the second son, Joaquín, was born, and in 1895, Elena. Sorolla is already a responsible father of a family; regularly participates in exhibitions in Spain and abroad. abroad and begins to receive awards and commissions relevant. Already confident of his style, he produces ambitious works in the orbit of social realism, which have an excellent in the exhibitions: in 1893 he painted Another Margarita!, which is sold in the United States; and in 1894 They still say that fish is expensive! and La vuelta de la pesca, which is purchased by the French State. This cycle ends with Triste inheritance, 1899.
1900-03
The road to success
In 1900, he received the Grand Prix of the Exposition Universal de Paris for the whole of its production, but in particular for Triste herencia. There he meets personally to important painters such as Giovanni Boldini, John Singer Sargent or Anders Zorn. In 1901, he was awarded the Medal of Honor in the National Exhibition of Fine Arts of Madrid. Clotilde faithfully accompanies him in all his stages. In these years Sorolla dedicates two precious works to him. tributes: Mother, where you represent her in bed with his newborn daughter Elena, and Desnudo de woman, an intimate work full of sensuality. He paints regularly on the beach in Valencia. Next to social theme paintings, it develops a new line of scenes of the fishermen's life, seen from with an optimistic outlook that makes the most of of the beauty of the sea and the joy of the sun. It starts in large format with Sewing the Candle (1896), which was also exhibited in Paris in 1900, and has a landmark in Sol de la tarde (1903), in which Sorolla himself saw the beginning of his artistic maturity.
1904-05
Light, color
In 1904, he painted about 250 paintings, some as large as such as Verano, and at the end of the year moves to a new address, a house with studio and a large garden. His work is increasingly focused on the study of the light and color. The successive stays in the small the Alicante port of Jávea (in 1896, 1898, 1900 and 1905) reveal to him a sea of deep water and different from that of the beach of Valencia, and it has a familiar with a more intense and brighter color scheme and with new effects of lights and reflections. End of day, in 1900, is already a manifesto of this new sensitivity. During the 1905 stay, Sorolla studies the transparencies of the submerged bodies and produces masterpieces such as El bote blanco.
1906
First solo exhibition: Paris
In July he held his first major solo exhibition in Paris, at the Galerie Georges Petit, one of the most prestigious. He presents 450 paintings, and obtains a resounding success. The critics are full of praise and sales confirm the excellent reception of his painting. He spends the summer in Biarritz, where he paints another kind of beach, with a fresh and clean color: the beach of fashionable vacationers, who enjoy the sea air dressed in white. In the autumn he dedicates his time in Segovia and Toledo to landscape painting, which will become increasingly important in his production. Their daughter Maria contracted severe tuberculosis and the family moved to a house in the mountains in El Pardo.
1907
Exhibitions in Germany and rest at La Granja
In 1907 Sorolla sent an exhibition of 280 works to Berlin, Düsseldorf and Cologne. He is unable to attend because of his daughter's illness. In summer, and with Maria already recovered, the family moved to La Granja de San Ildefonso, where Sorolla painted in the gardens, taking advantage of the attractive light filtering through the trees to make outdoor portraits, among them the extraordinary Portrait of King Alfonso XIII in Hussar Uniform.
1908
Exhibition in London
In February he paints in the gardens of the Alcazar of Seville. The Grafton Galleries in London will be hosting, from May to June, an exhibition of 450 works by Sorolla, an exhibition of exhibition that counts with important sponsors and which is inaugurated with great ceremony. There, the sold a portrait of Manuel B. Cossío, outstanding of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza and the author of the first great monograph ever written about El Greco. Sorolla, a close friend of the writer and an admirer of his work, returned to paint it immediately into a portrait of extreme sobriety and elegance that conveys intelligence and sensibility of the model. Sorolla took advantage of his stay to visit museums, and at the Britanico he enjoys intensely with the sculptures by Phidias for the Parthenon in Athens. When he returns to Spain, with a fresh memory of Greek sculptures, he paints in Valencia scenes of the beach where teenagers who enjoy the water and the the sun evoke the dream of a happy humanity Mediterranean", enjoying the gifts of the "Mediterranean", enjoying the gifts of the nature.
1909
New York. The great American adventure
Hispanic philanthropist Archer Milton Huntington, founder of the Hispanic Society of America, invites Sorolla to hold a major exhibition in his new building in New York. It was inaugurated in February with delirious success: 160,000 people visited it in one month, the critics were unanimously praiseworthy and sales were strong. The exhibition, somewhat reduced, is then presented at the Copley Society in Boston and the Fine Arts Academy in Buffalo. Sorolla returns to Spain definitively rich and famous. His stay that summer in Valencia is one of the most productive; some of his most famous beach paintings, such as Paseo a orillas del mar or El baño del caballo, belong to that season.
1910
Portraits and gardens
1910 is a vintage of excellent family portraits: Clotilde seated on a sofa, Clotilde in evening dress, Maria in a red blouse or Elena with a black hat. In previous stays in Andalusia (1908 and 1909), Sorolla had painted in the Alhambra in Granada and the Alcázar in Seville. He is attracted to Andalusian gardens with their mix of vegetation, architecture and water. Now, in 1910, he paints again in both places: gardens will occupy more and more space in his painting and his thought.
1911
A new home
The Hispanic Society organizes Sorolla exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago and the City Art Museum of St. Louis. The family spends the summer in San Sebastian, where Sorolla paints one of his most original paintings: Siesta. In December he moves to the new house he has had built in the then Paseo del Obelisco, today General Martínez Campos, a palace for which Sorolla himself will design and plant a beautiful garden inspired by motifs of the Alhambra in Granada and the Alcázar of Seville that had impressed him so much. Signs contract with Huntington to decorate the Hispanic Society library with a series of scenes of the types and customs of the different Spanish regions: La visión de España.
1912-1914
The vision of Spain
Sorolla began work on the decoration, which consisted of a set of large canvases, sometimes joined together to form larger panels; these tasks occupied him intensely until 1919. He will travel around the country making studies of the natural to execute the panels, which he will sometimes paint entirely in situ, in the open air. Start with the large Castile panel, which will be the largest in the series. In the summers he changes scenery and moves to San Sebastian, where he rests and paints. The outbreak of the World War halts the holding of exhibitions. Sorolla does not travel abroad again.
1915-1916
And always, the beach of Valencia
During these two years, while he traveled tirelessly around Spain to create the panels, Sorolla spent his summers in Valencia, where he painted monumental beach scenes, such as Pescadoras valencianas or La bata rosa, with an increasingly wise and mature treatment of light.
1917-1918
More travel
In 1917 and 1918 he painted again and for the last time in the Alhambra and the Alcazar. He continues to travel in order to continue with the elaboration of The Vision of Spain. After Valencia, las grupas (1916) and Extremadura, el mercado (1917), he paints Elche, el palmeral, which shines with golden light.
1919
Finalesl
The vision of Spain ends. Without showing signs of fatigue or decadence, it performs one of its best scenes: Ayamonte, tuna fishing, the last scene of and one of the most popular light shows in the world. Sorolla ever painted. In Mallorca and Ibiza he made his last paintings of and yet, in The Smugglers, we are still surprises with bold perspectives and a blue yet cleaner, more intense. The garden of his house has already grown large enough for to be painted, and Sorolla enjoys doing it.
1920-1923
The painter in his garden
In 1920 Sorolla is only 57 years old, but his appearance is that of an old man: the last years of hard work on The Vision of Spain have broken his health. By then he has received all the medals, honors and applause to which an artist can aspire; he is famous, respected, rich and adored by his family and friends. Now he rests painting his garden and some portraits right there, under the trees. In June 1920, while making a portrait under the pergola, he suffered a hemiplegia. He will not paint again. He will live for three more years, pampered by his family, but already oblivious to his surroundings. He died in August 1923. His funeral in Valencia is a multitudinous event: Sorolla was at the zenith of his popularity.
1926
The vision of Spain is installed in the Hispanic Society
In 1922, the company had moved to New York City, where the panels of The vision of Spain. The library of the Hispanic Society, with the panels Sorolla's paintings, now finally installed, are open to the public. public.
1929-32
The Sorolla Museum
Clotilde dies in 1929 and bequeaths to the Spanish State the family home and its collection of Sorolla's paintings. for a museum to be built. The creation of the Museum is going through a turbulent period in the history of the Spain: the end of the reign of Alfonso XIII and the proclamation of the Second Republic. However, these circumstances did not stop the project: the bequest was accepted in 1931 and the The museum opened in 1932. familiar with a more intense and brighter color scheme and with new effects of lights and reflections. End of day, in 1900, is already a manifesto of this new sensitivity. During the 1905 stay, Sorolla studies the transparencies of the submerged bodies and produces masterpieces such as El bote blanco.