Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida was born on 27 February 1863. He was orphaned at two years old, and he and his sister Concha were taken in by their maternal aunt Isabel Bastida and her husband José Piqueres. During his time at the Teacher Training College in Valencia, Sorolla showed skill and interest in drawing, and his uncle decided to sign him up for night classes at the Valencia Craft School, where he studied under the sculptor Cayetano Capuz. Later, in 1878, he entered the San Carlos School of Fine Arts in Valencia, where he received all-round artistic training. Those years of training were fundamental for him, as it was there that he befriended Juan Antonio García del Castillo, whose father, Antonio García Peris, was a well-known photographer in Valencia in the late 19^th century. Sorolla worked for him retouching photographs and Antonio García provided him with a studio where he could paint. This relationship was important for Sorolla not only because of the patronage provided by Antonio García, but also because he would marry the latter’s daughter Clotilde García del Castillo several years later.

Sorolla’s trips to Madrid were fundamental while he was training. He would visit the Prado, where he was captivated by the Spanish painting of the Golden Age, especially Velázquez, whose influence can be seen in Sorolla’s work throughout his career. At that time, he also entered national painting contests and won the Gold Medal at the Valencia Regional Exhibition with his work Nun in Prayer. The following year, 1884, he was awarded a scholarship by Valencia Provincial Council to study in Rome, and he moved there in 1885. Apart from immersing himself in the Rome art scene, Sorolla had the opportunity to visit Paris, where he discovered the international movements of the time and identified with the sensitivity of Jules Bastien-Lepage and the Nordic painters. He was in Rome at the same time as other Spanish scholars, including the Benlliure brothers (the painter José and th sculptor Mariano), Emilio Sala Francés and José Villegas y Cordero. His scholarship was extended for a year, which he spent in Assisi with Clotilde, whom he had married in Valencia in 1888. The following year, the couple moved to Madrid, where they lived from then on and where Sorolla embarked on his career as an artist. He started out with themes close to social realism, in vogue at that time, with works such as Another Marguerite!, which won the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1892, and Sad Inheritance!, which won the Grand Prix at the 1900 Paris World Fair. After that Sorolla turned away from social issues and focused on other aspects already present in his work, such as the beaches of Valencia and children, producing paintings bathed in light and scenes representing the joy of life.

Those scenes would earn him world fame, particularly thanks to his international solo shows in Paris (1906), Berlin, Dusseldorf and Cologne (1907), London (1908), New York, Buffalo and Boston (1909), Chicago and St. Louis (1911). The 1908 exhibition in London was also life changing for Sorolla’s artistic career, as it was there that he met Archer Milton Huntington, a North-American patron of the arts. Apart from organising his exhibitions in the US in 1909 and 1911, Huntington gave Sorolla the most important commission of his career: to decorate the library of the Hispanic Society of America. Between 1912 and 1919, Sorolla painted a series of panels for it, depicting different Spanish regions with their characters and typical activities. The physical effort involved affected his health, and shortly after finishing it, on 17 June 1920, he had a stroke in his garden while he was painting The Portrait of Mrs. López de Ayala. Sorolla never recovered from the stroke and died at his daughter María’s house in Cercedilla on 10 August 1923. In 1914 he was made a full member of the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts, where he also taught Composition and Colour. The Sorolla Museum was opened in 1932 thanks to the support of his widow Clotilde García, at the house that they had bought in 1905.

Mónica Rodríguez Subirana