Sorolla Y Bastida
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
JOAQUIN, a Spanish figure, landscape, and portrait painter, born at Valencia, in 1863. He studied art at the academy of his native city, as well as at Madrid and in Italy, but was especially influenced by his study in Paris of the works of Bastien-Lepage and of Menzel. The two paintings which brought him his first recognition were recognition "Another Marguerite" (1892), now at the St. Louis (Mo.) Museum, and "Fishing Boats' Return," now at the Luxembourg Museum, Paris. The Grand Prix awarded to him at the Paris Salon in 1900 stamped him as one of the most eminent modern painters, and from then on he has produced an almost incredible number of paintings. Although using comparatively simple color schemes, he was highly successful in achieving remarkable color effects, which, together with his very brilliant technique and his sincere representation, have made his pictures extremely popular. Highly successful special exhibitions of his work were held in Paris, London, and New York. His principal subjects are landscapes, marines, mothers with babies, children at play, and fisherfolk, almost all of them placed out of doors in brilliant sunlight. His portraits, which include those of a large number of prominent people, are distinguished by force of characterization and brilliancy of technique. He has been awarded many gold medals in various countries, and examples of his work are to be found in most of the prominent public and private collections. In the United States he is especially well represented in the Metropolitan Museum, New York.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote in 1921 that Sorolla "has produced an almost incredible number of paintings," he had in fact been unable to hold a brush since a stroke in 1920; he died at Cercedilla in August 1923. His last great labour, the fourteen huge panels of "Vision of Spain" painted for the Hispanic Society of America, was installed on Manhattan's Audubon Terrace in 1926, after his death, and remains the largest body of his work outside Spain. His house and studio in Madrid opened as the Museo Sorolla in 1932, the gift of his widow Clotilde. His reputation faded badly through the mid-century decades of modernist taste, then recovered strongly: major retrospectives, including the National Gallery in London in 2019, have restored him as the painter of Mediterranean sunlight that Collier's already thought him.
Written for this edition, 2026.