Joaquín Sorolla (1863-1923) is one of the masters of painting. He has left his mark on history for the way he captured light in his paintings and depicted the difference in brightness between the Mediterranean and Cantabria in moments of everyday life.
There is much debate as to whether he belonged to the Impressionist trend, and he always wanted to distance himself from Impressionism and create his own personal pictorial language. The richness and brightness of his colors have often obscured his beginnings when he was just trying to make his way at the San Carlos School of Fine Arts in his hometown of Valencia, where he enrolled in 1878.
And we forget that in his early stages he was a great innovator in the approach to social realism, a general trend at the end of the 19th century.
Academics in the 18th century were interested in art, themes created around heroes. A century later, these became noble and dramatic depictions of anonymous men and women living simple lives.
Sorolla is not left out of this trend. It was also relevant that these themes gradually became more widely accepted in the official competitions that painters entered for recognition at the beginning of their careers.
The culmination of these events occurred in 1895, when Sorolla won his first medal at the Spanish National Exhibition. And even now, fish are said to be expensive.. Sorolla was convinced that “winning an award does not make a good painter.” But in fact, he wrote a letter to his wife Clotilde on June 15, 1895, telling her that he had won his coveted prize for this work.
hardness of the sea
The artist uses a rustic color palette to bring the harsh life of the fishermen before our eyes. The idyllic sea we are used to seeing in his paintings is replaced by social realism.
He was probably inspired by the literature of his friend Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. Flor de mayo (1895) recounted the accident of a group of sailors at sea and the death of the youngest, Pasquale, on the shores of Cabagnal in Valencia.
Sorolla’s writing captures with deep humanity the helplessness of two experienced sailors in the face of an injured young man. This is a theme that explains the intensity of facial expressions weathered by the sun and the hand gestures honed by work. Sorolla uses his unique pictorial language to convey the drama of the moment and celebrates the simplicity of the anonymous fishermen. The vibrations of his brushstrokes create a verisimilitude comparable to late 19th century photography.
Before tackling the painting’s considerable size (151.5 x 204 cm), Sorolla conducted two preliminary studies to study its scenography. Bodega de una embarcación.valencia and ship interior.
Painted on canvas or cardboard, these works recreate the interior of a ship with an almost still-life motif, with notable differences in texture: the roughness of the ropes, the wood of the barrels, the gleam of the fish. Masu. The scales are strongly illuminated by the light shining through the ship’s hatch.
sailor psychology
The unity of his characters, his technical mastery, and his psychological approach can also be seen in other lesser-known early Sorolla paintings.in peel potatoes (1891) A lonely fisherman prepares his daily bread. and, Cabanyar Beach Boat Blessing (1895), the gaze of a young fisherman invites us to participate in a solemn ceremony.
The sober color palette of the clothing in the foreground contrasts with the brightness of the Mediterranean, and the barely sketched sailing ships contrast the rigors of the fishermen’s work with the joyful images of the sea’s leisure, a recognition that later inspired Sorolla’s It will control the work. image.
Religious overtones also play a leading role in social realism. happy day (1892). Here, a girl receiving her first communion goes to her fisherman’s hut to receive the blessing of her blind and sick grandfather, showing her deep kindness.
Again, Sorolla prepared the work with sketches and sketches for exhibition at the National Exhibition of 1892, declaring it one of his favorite works. The room’s open door offers views of the Mediterranean Sea. The artist uses a lighting shed within a shed to study chiaroscuro in the definition of space.
land inequality
The condemnation of social inequality in this early part of Sorolla’s work extends beyond the maritime realm.There are also harsh realities Marguerite again! (1892), a woman travels from Valencia to Madrid, handcuffed and guarded by Benemerita, accused of killing her son.
Sorolla was inspired by an image he himself saw on a train journey, recalling Goethe’s Marguerite, one of the greatest dramas of the 19th century. faust. In it, Marguerite, mad with her love for her protagonist, is imprisoned for killing her illegitimate child with her protagonist.
A meager horse-drawn carriage is repeated as a spatial setting. white slave trade (1894), four young prostitutes were accompanied by a prostitute, a look of deep concern on her face.
In these works, Sorolla shows himself to be a painter of human nature, which arouses special emotions in the audience, which led to the recognition he enjoyed during his lifetime, and which influenced the Spanish culture of the time. became the reference point. .
This accolade continues to this day, with an exhibition commemorating the 100th anniversary of his birth. Sorolla is a tireless and versatile painter who depicts light and color, the innocence of children, the beach, family, pain, and illness. And he is also a social realist painter, capturing the precariousness of his life in such a way that he “glorifies the pain of living the poorest of the poor.”