Part 1: Sorolla

February 14th, 2024

Joaquin Sorolla Y Bastida, (usually known as Sorolla) is personally my favorite artist of all time. Though he was extremely successful and popular during his lifetime, he seems to be largely forgotten these days. (I suppose Sorolla would probably take that over being poor and destitute during his life, while having his art sell for millions after his death, à la Van Gogh). 

My initial contact with his work came about by chance. My Dad was on a visit to Spain, and during his stay in Madrid, he happened to come across the Museo Sorolla, (his former studio turned into a museum.) He was awed by Sorolla’s huge, gasp-inducing canvases, which included pristine Valencian beach scenes blazing with light.

Naturally, when he returned home, I heard about his work and went about researching him. I was immediately taken by his paintings, especially his absolutely stunning beach scenes.

If you want to know more about his life in general, I would recommend checking out this website. In this article, I’m mostly going to concern myself with his artwork.

Sorolla is most famous for his beach scenes, which generally depict children and adults enjoying themselves at the water, as well as fishermen engaging in their trade. 

These paintings blaze with his trademark color and light. When you view them, you are transported to another place: you feel the hot, glaring sun, the wet sand, the rumbling waves, and the sea breeze pressing against you.

These paintings are generally life size, or close to it, and Sorolla mostly painted them outdoors, on the beach.  

It's hard to place him in a specific category of painting, he was certainly heavily influenced by impressionism, as can be seen in his use of broad, flowing brushstrokes and colorful shadows. 

Nevertheless, he does build up his forms robustly, and especially in his portraits, uses traditional blending techniques reminiscent of artists such as Diego Velasquez.

Sorolla has often been compared to artists of his day, such as John Singer Sargent and Anders Zorn. But even though their respective styles are quite similar, there is one thing that sets him apart, and that is his use of light. 

I don’t think there has ever been an artist who could capture sunlight the way he could. His paintings seem to glow from within. Sorolla mastered the use of the spectrum to paint the “color of light.'' His shadows, rather than being the dark chocolate browns  of earlier painters, instead glow with brilliant reflected colors. He often exaggerated these reflections to increase the visual potency of his painting. Furthermore, he achieved this without making his paintings crude and garish, which is easy to do using such strong mixtures of color.

Sorolla's beach scenes always seem bathed in light...