The Royal Academy of the Arts in London, hosted the collection of the New York Hispanic Society Museum of America from January to April of last year (2023), in an exhibition titled ‘Spain and the Hispanic World’. The show displayed treasures ranging from masterpieces by Goya and Velasquez to dazzling objects from South America. In the exhibition was featured an oil on canvas measuring 150 x 225 cm of Louis Comfort Tiffany (1), the American artist and designer best known for his work in stained-glass. It was painted by Post-Impressionist Spanish artist Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida (1963-1923) in 1911 in New York.
Tiffany, is depicted wearing an immaculate white suit, seated in the garden of his estate in New York, amid a profusion of colourful flowers facing an easel with his paintbrushes and palette in hand. Resembling a photograph, the portrait is striking by its scale and its embrace of sunlight. The pure luminous whites combined with vivid purples, yellows and pinks, are characteristic of Sorolla’s technical virtuosity to replicate light and movement through the play of paint. Infused with light, the portrait, like many of Sorolla’s works, was painted en ‘plein air’, capturing a fleeting moment, like a painted snapshot. Produced in America for an American patron, the painting also indicates the cosmopolitan dimension of the artist’s career, the diversity of his personal relations and attests to his international importance.
Dazzled by this portrait, I was curious to understand how the artist had succeeded to paint so realistically, whether Sorolla was aware of photography during his lifetime and assuming so, whether he used photographs to paint.
To answer these questions, it was important to examine and analyse the formal elements of selected artworks by Sorolla, based on the method of iconography. As well as to understand how Sorolla’s overall technique and thematic choices evolved from his formative years to the years of maturity. The iconological interpretation examined how Sorolla’s paintings advanced, from being social-themed artworks aimed to be displayed in Spanish and international exhibitions, into paintings dominated by seascapes for his American audience, to the more intimate and family oriented themes – once his prestige in Europe and America was assured; not to mention, the period dedicated to the monumental series celebrating his native country, commissioned by his most important patron.
For further insight on the role of photography in Sorolla’s painting, it was essential to understand the personal, social and cultural context in which Sorolla grew and evolved : from his close links to photography on a personal level, to more generally, the exploration of the cultural scene in nineteenth century Europe and America with the emergence of photography and the rise of new artistic movements such as Impressionism. A combination of factors which enabled a better appreciation of their impact on Sorolla the painter and his artistic practices and how photography inspired his keen eye and obsessive pursuit to paint what he saw and to reproduce reality, honestly.
Gifted, Sorolla’s talent was recognised at a very early age and his undeniable technical virtuosity was admired unanimously. Owing to his encounter with the photographer Antonio Garcia, his stable marriage to Clotilde and his devoted family, Sorolla benefitted from a solid foundation. This allowed him to dedicate himself to his art, and launch his career, into becoming Spain’s most celebrated international artist of his time. His presence at salons, galleries and exhibitions in Spain and abroad, undoubtedly exposed him to new influences and friendships which stimulated his creativity and pushed him to excel. While the ceaseless travelling across Europe and to America, further exposed him to new experiences, new contacts and importantly to success. International recognition, accompanied by honours and awards, crucially liberated him, artistically and financially.
Over time, his painting became freer and more focused on the themes he loved the most, sunlight and his family. Spending hours on the beach Sorolla reproduced the natural world he revered, translating onto canvas what he observed with the help of a paintbrush and his recording eye – assimilating the language of photography that he had been introduced to at a an early age, in the Valencian photographer Antonio Garcia’s studio. ‘Plein air’ painting was an anaesthetic immersion into light and space, that stimulated his obsessive study of vast spaces dominated by light and the changing surface of water.
Despite the evidently visible input of the aesthetics of photography in Sorolla’s work, a key part of his development as a painter came nevertheless from his ‘apuntes’. The hand painted colour notes taken to capture impressions, the changing effects of sunlight, various phases of the day, of seasons. His command of drawing and mastery of colour was such, that combined with his observant eye, Sorolla worked on light and movement in a way that was not possible simply with photography. Indeed, Sorolla’s faculty of possessing two different eyes, one of a photographer, one of a painter, meant that together, they nourished his gaze, in a constant process of ‘interpreting and witnessing’ every day scenes of modern life, communicating the ‘veracity’ of what he saw.
The images attached do not do justice to Sorolla’s talent. If you have the opportunity to see one of his paintings in person, you will appreciate for yourselves the wonderful technique and sheer beauty of his painting.
- Museo Sorolla : https://www.cultura.gob.es/msorolla/inicio.html
- The National Gallery : https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/past/sorolla
- Thyssen-Bornemiza Museum : https://www.museothyssen.org/exposiciones/sorolla-moda
- Prado Museum : https://www.museodelprado.es/en/whats-on/exhibition/joaquin-sorolla-1863-1923/85db1346-5da6-43ca-807b-028010e8369a
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