19th-20th Century Spanish

Born in Valencia on 27 February 1863, Sorolla gave early proof of his natural talent and was sent to the city’s School of Arts and Crafts where he learned drawing with the sculptor Cayetano Capuz (1838-1912?).

He enrolled at the San Carlos School of Fine Arts in 1879. One year later he was working as a lighting assistant in the studio of the prestigious photographer Antonio García Peris (1841-1918), whose daughter Clotilde he would marry in September 1888. Their three children María, Joaquín and Elena were born between 1889 and 1895.

In 1881 and 1882 he travelled on several occasions to Madrid, where he visited the Prado Museum and painted copies of works by old masters, mostly Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), El Greco (1541-1614) and José de Ribera (1591-1652). In 1884 his work El dos de mayo enjoyed great success at the , which encouraged him to apply for a scholarship to further his training in Rome, which he eventually received from the Diputación de Valencia in 1885. In the Italian capital he made the acquaintance of important Spanish painters, like José Benlliure (1855-1937), Emilio Sala (1850-1910) and José Villegas (1844-1921), and became familiar with .

The artist returned to Valencia in 1889, only to move to Madrid the following year, where he set up his residence and studio. This moment was the beginning of a period of hectic exhibition activity in Spain and abroad which continued until 1900.

In 1892 he won another first class medal at the for his painting ¡Otra Margarita! (Another Margarita), and yet again in 1895 with the work ¡Aún dicen que el pescado es caro! (And They Still Say Fish Is Expensive!). Little by little, Sorolla abandoned social subject matters in favour of his celebrated beach scenes, painted during his stays in Jávea, in which he introduced a new concept of colour and light. This was the body of work that won him great worldwide acclaim.

He won the Grand Prix at the 1900 Paris Exposition with the painting Triste herencia (Sad Inheritance), for which he would also later win the Honorary Medal at the . From that moment onwards his work was showcased in major exhibitions thanks to the support of important art dealers. Sorolla’s reputation was cemented throughout Europe thanks to a number of high profile exhibitions: his first solo exhibition at Galerie Georges Petit in Paris in 1906, a show the following in Berlin, and then one at Grafton Galleries in London in 1908.

In 1909, Archer Milton Huntington invited the artist to exhibit at the Hispanic Society of America in New York. The show consolidated his success for good. Huntington’s admiration for Sorolla led to the single most important commission in his whole career: the decoration of the library of the Hispanic Society with large panels representing the different Spanish regions. The project gave Sorolla an opportunity to present his Visión de España for which he travelled throughout Spain, dedicating himself almost exclusively to this project from 1911 to 1919.

In 1921 he suffered a hemiplegia attack which left him disabled until his death on 10 August 1923. Sorolla would die without seeing his works exhibited in the library of the Hispanic Society, where they were finally installed in 1926.