Part 2: Sorolla

March 5th  2024

Before you read this, I'd recommend checking out Part 1 if you haven't already.

I'd like to continue this article with a rundown of the other unique aspects of Joaquin Sorolla’s painting. We'll start with the unusually huge size of his predominately plein air paintings, the legendary speed with which he could polish them off, and finish with a little dive into his compositional methods.

Plein Air

Sorolla preferred above all else to paint outdoors. He is reported to have said, “As far as outdoor work is concerned, a studio is only a garage; a place in which to store pictures and repair them, never a place in which to paint them." He would even try to paint portraits outdoors, which is quite unusual. “I do not care to paint portraits indoors. I cannot feel sympathetic."

Plein air painting is usually done on fairly small canvases, usually no bigger than 18"x24" or so, because conditions naturally change rapidly outdoors, and there is not enough time to paint a large canvas adequately (Well, only for us mortals). Sorolla painted around the 4'x6' range, and many of his paintings are much larger. He is reported to have used a pallet the size of a table, and brushes 3ft long! This would have been essential, considering the amount of canvas he would need to cover with his massive brushstrokes.

This leads right into my next point, which is concerned with the extraordinary speed with which he painted. 

Speed

“I could not paint at all if I had to paint slowly,” he once said. “Every effect is so transient, it must be rapidly painted.”

He was viewed with envy by his peers: famous Italian artist Giovanni Boldini spoke of him as “that devil.”

Sorolla would set up his huge canvases on the beach, held down by various ropes and weights, and polish them off in a few mornings. Some paintings would take longer than others, but he generally finished them in less than a week of painting every morning.

Composition

Sorolla reportedly went into his paintings without a structured plan of action, prefering to let the painting develop naturally. (That is all well and good for him, but my paintings would probably end in disaster if I followed such advice!) This contributes to that feeling of spontaneity that his paintings have. He also used techniques such as cropping, and shallow depth of field, to create a painting that seems to freeze a moment in time. For this reason his works have often been compared to snapshots. 

Sorolla has an amazing ability to draw the viewer into the painting. You feel like you are standing right there.

I hope you enjoyed this series on Joaquin Sorolla. I had so much fun researching and writing this piece. For more information on him, check out https://sorollapaintings.com.

Dominic Keim