Helena Almeida: 'Seduzir' [To Seduce, 2002] (detail)

Collection

En la tasca. Zarauz [In the Tavern. Zarauz]

Image caption
JOAQUÍN SOROLLA Y BASTIDA

En la tasca. Zarauz [In the Tavern. Zarauz]

  • 1910
  • Oil on canvas
  • 100 x 80 cm
  • Cat. P_328
  • Acquired in 1971
By:
Mónica Rodríguez Subirana

This work was painted by Sorolla in the summer of 1910, when the painter spent the summer with his family at the Hotel Miramar in Zarauz, and painted in the town, in the surrounding areas and in San Sebastián.

From 1906 on, Sorolla spent his summers in the north of Spain and in France, first in Biarritz, then in Zarautz and finally in San Sebastián. His choice of destinations was far from random. He chose them because he would have the opportunity there to paint scenes of beaches and light very different from those of his native Valencia, whose luminosity he captured on the canvases that gave him the fame he still enjoys today. These were also the summer destinations chosen by the painters in Sorolla’s close circle (such as landscape painter Aureliano de Beruete) and by high society, providing an opportunity for the painter’s family to move in elevated social circles. Those high society summers were depicted in works from 1910 that were highly characteristic of Sorolla, including Under the Awning. Beach at Zarauz (Sorolla Museum, Madrid) and On the Sand. Beach at Zarauz (Sorolla Museum, Madrid). Yet apart from these elegant summer scenes, Sorolla also painted common folk during those stays. The individuals in the work owned by the Banco de España In the Tavern.Zarauz (1910) is a case in point. Throughout his career, Sorolla often painted portraits of ordinary people going about their everyday activities, thus capturing the ways of life and social reality of his time. From his first large beach scenes, in which he reflected work at sea, Sorolla combined the sea and seafarers as two aspects of his painting. That can be seen in the large canvases that made him famous, such as Evening Sun 1903, The Hispanic Society, New York) and The Return from Fishing (1894, Musée d’Orsay, Paris). But right from the start of his career, he showed a particular interest in portraying the working classes in other more intimate scenes showing not only physical portraits but also customs. This is the case of the The Old Man with a Cigarette (1899, Sorolla Museum Madrid) and The Peppers (1903, The Hispanic Society, New York). They show Sorolla’s interest in sun- and work-weathered faces at times of rest and leisure. That very combination can be seen In the Tavern. Zarauz, which shows two men, who are certainly seafarers, relaxing. Such figures attracted Sorolla’s attention not only for large canvases but also for small colour sketches, made quickly to capture scenes instantly. Some of those colour sketches, also from 1910, are now on show in the Sorolla Museum Collection. There are also canvases there that show that the summer in Zarautz was particularly prolific in terms of scenes of common folk. We know some of them by name: Juan Ángel, portrayed in Basque Drinker (1910, now in Malaga Museum), or their nicknames, such as Moscorra (1910, Sorolla Museum, Madrid). There are also other characters who today remain anonymous, such as the The Boatman of Zarauz (1910, Sorolla Museum, Madrid), Cider Drinker (1910, private collection) and The Two Friends (1910, private collection). This side of Sorolla’s painting was captured in the large panels that he produced from 1912 onwards to decorate the library of the Hispanic Society of America, which formed what he would call his Vision of Spain through its common folk.

Mónica Rodríguez Subirana

 
By:
Mónica Rodríguez Subirana
Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida
Valencia 1863 - Cercedilla (Madrid) 1923

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 19th 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

 
«Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida», Galería Theo (Madrid, 1968). «Obras de paso. Contemporáneos en Palacio», Museo Cerralbo (Madrid, 2023).
Bernardino de Pantorba La vida y la obra de Joaquín Sorolla: estudio biográfico y crítico, Madrid, Gráficas Monteverde, 1970, 2ª edición ampliada. Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez & Julián Gállego Banco de España. Colección de pintura, Madrid, Banco de España, 1985. Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez, Julián Gállego & María José Alonso Colección de pintura del Banco de España, Madrid, Banco de España, 1988. Francisco Fernández Pardo Sorolla en Guipúzcoa, «Perfil de Sorolla en Guipúzcoa», San Sebastián, Fundación Kutxa, 1992. Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 1. Federico García Serrano Sorolla en 30 claves, Barcelona, Larousse, 2023, p. 29.