Biography:
Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, Spanish painter and graphic artist, was born on February 27, 1863, in Valencia, Spain.
He has not had a very happy childhood, since his parents have died when he was barely two years old, due to a cholera epidemic. For what he has been raised by his uncles, who try to include him in the locksmith profession that his uncle used to carry, but soon after Joaquín manifests his desire for painting.
In 1874 the young man began his studies at the Escuela Normal Superior where he was advised to also enroll in night drawing classes at the School of Craftsmen, which he received in 1879. It was in this same year that he entered the School Superior of Fine Arts of San Carlos at the same time that he worked in his uncle’s workshop.
Then studying at an Academy of San Carlos where he began to interact and make friends with his peers, where he met Juan Antonio García.
At the end of his studies, and already having enough experience, the young man sent some of his works to provincial competitions and national exhibitions of fine arts, such as the one in Madrid in May 1881. Then the following year, he studied the work of Velázquez and other authors in the Prado Museum, and it is finally in 1883 that he gets a medal at the Valencia Regional Exhibition and the following year he achieves glory by getting the Second Class Medal at the National Exhibition thanks to his work “Dos de Mayo” .
Then he continues in his career, his next great success in Valencia with his work “El crit del palleter” about the War of Independence, and with this recognition he has been awarded a pension by the Provincial Council of Valencia to travel to Rome. There the artist gets to know classical and Renaissance art, and in the company of his friend the painter Pedro Gil they travel to Paris, experiencing impressionist painting closely, which has produced variations in its theme and style. With this impression still on top, Sorolla manages to paint the religious painting entitled “The Burial of Christ”, with which despite his innovation he ends up failing outright.
It was in 1888 that Sorolla married Clotilde García, the sister of his fellow student, in Valencia, then they settled in Madrid and, in just five years, Sorolla achieved some fame and prestige as a painter.
Due to such popularity, in 1894 he traveled again to Paris and there developed the luminism, which with time would be a characteristic of his work; and it is in this way that he begins to paint outdoors, combining light with everyday scenes and landscapes of Mediterranean life. This has been demonstrated in works such as “The return of fishing”, “The beach of Valencia” or “Sad inheritance”, which describes the feeling produced by the vision of the Mediterranean Sea, and with the latter has received in 1900, the Grand Prix at the international pageant in Paris. Then comes his new painting of social denunciation “I face diuen que el peix es car”, arrived in 1895; and it is at this same time that Valencia named him a favorite and meritorious son, and a street was named after him.
He has continued in the following years, visiting various cities in which he exhibited his work as he has done in an exhibition in Paris, in which he has presented more than half a thousand works.
In 1916 he has dedicated himself to painting works dedicated to children and women on the beaches of Valencia, where the freedom of brushwork and the light of his land predominate, as shown in “Mother and daughter” or “Valencian fisherwoman”. The way to highlight the theme was really evaluated, as well as his immeasurable Vision of Spain canvas.
Another facet of the artist has been that of a portraitist of important figures such as Juan Ramón Jiménez, King Alfonso XIII, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, Ortega y Gasset, among others. After several years, in 1914 Sorolla was appointed academic and, upon finishing the work for the Hispanic Society, which included some murals, he began to work as a professor of composition and color at the School of Fine Arts in Madrid.
His painting has represented the direct application of luminism to the landscape and the figure, thus bringing this trend closer to the society of the time.
It was in 1920, when Joaquin painted the portrait of Mrs. Pérez de Ayala in the garden of his house in Madrid, when he suffered a hemiplegia attack that drastically reduced his physical and mental faculties; and died at his home in Cercedilla on August 10, 1923.
Some of his Works
- (1898) The meal on the boat
- (1910) Children on the beach
- (1911) After the Bath