Toulouse. The beautiful season suits Joaquín Sorolla (1863-1923). In 2016, the Museum of Impressionisms in Giverny presented “Sorolla, a Spanish painter in Paris” then, in 2020, the Hôtel de Caumont (Aix-en-Provence) programmed “Joaquín Sorolla, Spanish lights”, and here this summer at the Bemberg Collection “Sorolla, master of light”. If the Sorolla Museum in Madrid, currently under construction, is the only lender for this Toulouse exhibition, the two other monographs brought together loans from several institutions and private collectors. Some works from the Sorolla Museum were shown there and are also present in Toulouse: let us mention Mother (around 1895-1901) – which we also saw last year at the exhibition “The Empire of Sleep” at the Marmottan Museum – On the sand, Zarautz beach (summer 1910), Backlight, Maria in Biarritz (summer 1906), The Shadow of the Boat (Valencia, 1903)… These are masterpieces by the painter, highly appreciated by the public.
Sketches of beaches that appear contemporary
This year, however, all of the 66 works presented come from Sorolla’s house-studio and the image they give of his work is misleading. What do we find there? Portraits of family and friends, studio funds (studies and unfinished paintings), the most personal works, everything the artist did not part with during his lifetime. However, like many painters of his generation, Sorolla had two strings to his bow: the one which expressed his freedom (sketches, intimate works) and the one, official and realistic, which was appreciated by amateurs and the institutions of his time. The public of the Bemberg Collection who visits the exhibition without purchasing the catalog (in which the historical and genre paintings which sold well are reproduced) therefore does not have an exact idea of what Sorolla was for his contemporaries, an academic painter of absolute virtuosity but who would hardly appeal to us today.
The artist also perfectly understood that times were changing. The catalog says that, for his first personal exhibition at the Georges Petit gallery, in 1906 in Paris, he presented 200 paintings and 300 sketches. “Never a brush has contained so much sun”,wrote the journalist and politician Henri Rochefort. The vacation and family scenes are those bursts of light that enchant us in the collections of the Sorolla Museum and we also love the portraits, both incisive and empathetic. As for the sketches of beach scenes, they seem so contemporary to us that they opened the exhibition this year and immediately won the votes.
Much less known, and therefore representing a great discovery, are the studies for the “Vision of Spain” cycle, a decorative set in the library of the Hispanic Society of America in New York painted between 1911 and 1919, and the views of architecture and gardens that from 1907 he created for his pleasure. He himself designed the garden of Casa Sorolla which he represented in painting from 1918, the last images of summer and happiness taken away by the visitor.
