Madrid,
There have been several exhibitions dedicated to Sorolla that in the last year, and in various Spanish museums, have reviewed different facets of his production, reminding us that, beyond clichés, this artist not only worked by the sea and that, even when he did, it is possible to extract many layers of reading from his beach scenes: in addition to Mediterranean light, his compositions shelter sociological studies, sometimes critical, of a time and a place.
The painter’s museum in Madrid has closed its doors, initially until 2026, for renovation works, but those who previously visited his paintings in the capital can continue to do so, until next February, in the Royal Collections Gallery: its room of temporary exhibitions, it hosts the exhibition “Sorolla, one hundred years of modernity”, which features pieces that had rarely left the Martínez Campos palace and others on loan from other collections, such as those from the Prado, the Museum of Fine Arts in Asturias, the Musée d’Orsay or American or Mexican funds. Almost eighty works have been brought together, under the joint curation of Enrique Varela Agüi, Blanca Pons-Sorolla and Consuelo Luca de Tena, representative of the various stages of the Valencian’s career and also his thematic paths.
One of them will be unpublished for the public, since it was considered missing since the year following its creation (Paris Boulevardfrom 1889, his only composition with an urban theme and linked to the new forms of leisure of contemporary times), but they will also surprise viewers La Giralda, Seville (1908), which had not been exhibited since Sorolla’s death in 1923, and four unpublished canvases in Spain, all of them from his mature phase: Portrait of the Mexican tiple Esperanza Iris (1920), Arch and door of Santa María, Burgos (1910), Children bathing or afternoon sun, Valencia (1909) and Boats in Jávea (1905).
This anthology is structured in five chronological sections, beginning with a time of youth in which, having achieved academic solidity and personal skill with the brushes, Sorolla decided to apply for all possible awards and salons to make a living from his art. Those first works were mostly traditional, and therefore close to the taste of the public, but in some he also introduced social criticism. From that early period they date They still say fish is expensive! either The return of fishing (1894), made only a decade after the beginning of his career in Madrid; In 1900 his Grand Prix would arrive at the Universal Exhibition in Paris, the city that inspired him precisely that work that we have the first opportunity to contemplate (Paris Boulevard), a large-format composition that began in France and ended in Spain based on his notes.
He reproduces the very busy terrace of a café where he takes a self-portrait (on the left), and Sorolla demonstrates his good work by combining the natural light of the evening with the artificial light of the establishment; the author referred to this image as overtly naturalistic: I tried to bring the sensation of life that I saw.
It did not take long before Sorolla made the sea his great motivation as an artist, the setting in which to germinate a personal poetics in which the tenderness of the known and the plastic procedures of the avant-garde had a place. These procedures varied wherever he worked: if on the Valencian beaches he carried out naturalistic representations that evoke a certain ancestral character of the landscape, on those in Jávea he allowed himself to experiment more thoroughly with color and compositional procedures, and on those in the north he deployed figures elegantly dressed in fashion. In this chapter we can highlight the presence of The pink robehighly esteemed by the painter himself, Walk by the sea either Boys on the beach.
Twenty of his self-portraits and portraits of illustrious personalities have also reached the Royal Collections (which have a new director, Víctor Cageao): among them, those of Ira Nelson Morris and his childrenthe photographer Antonio García in his laboratory; The Benlliure Arana family, Santiago Ramón y Cajal either José Echegaray. And some family members could not be missing, in which his wife Clotilde takes center stage; Sorolla conceived this genre as a silent dialogue between two individuals in which both want to express their individualities.
A fourth section of the tour is for the great commission that Archer M. Huntington gave him, and which would be the most important of his life: that of the project Vision of Spain to decorate the library of the New York Hispanic Society. These works had to represent the popular clothing and customs of all regions of our country so that the American public could understand them; Most of the images correspond to Andalusia and Castilla.
For seven years, between 1912 and 1919, the artist traveled from north to south carrying out large-format type studies; Four of them have ended up in the exhibition: those corresponding to Lagartera, Salamanca, La Mancha and El Roncal. When his dresses were more ordinary, Sorolla gave greater presence to the background landscape.
And they put a finishing touch to the whole, precisely, his landscapes and gardens: he painted many, both independently and behind the figures, and he especially liked forceful natures, like those he found in Navacerrada or Guadarrama. In the limited terrain of the orchards, he focused primarily on daring frames, aquatic reflections and light variations, with their consequent shadows.
As soon as in 1906 he began to experiment with the nuances of light through foliage and to bring some of his portraits to the garden space, some time later he was seduced by the Alhambra and the Alcázar of Seville and under their influence Sorolla designed his own Madrid garden, the Eden of his final years, which he would in turn capture in his paintings since 1916.
The retrospective closes with well-known fabrics, such as The siesta, Clotilde in the garden, Garden of the Sorolla house, Burgos Cathedral and Gardens of the Alcázar of Seville. shadow study. They dazzled many a century ago, and they continue to do so.
“Sorolla: one hundred years of modernity”
GALLERY OF ROYAL COLLECTIONS
C/ Bailén, s/n
Madrid
From October 17, 2024 to February 16, 2025
