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

Collection

Voltaire contando uno de sus cuentos [Voltaire Telling a Story]

Image caption
JOAQUÍN SOROLLA Y BASTIDA

Voltaire contando uno de sus cuentos [Voltaire Telling a Story]

  • 1905
  • Oil on canvas
  • 367 x 276 cm
  • Cat. P_73
  • Acquired in 1970
By:
Mónica Rodríguez Subirana

Decorative paintings such as this one were not one of Sorolla’s preferred genres, even though they were among those for which he became best known when he painted the canvases to decorate the library of the Hispanic Society of America from 1912 onwards. Many years earlier, in 1905, Sorolla decorated a ceiling at the house of forestry engineer Calixto Rodríguez. The central piece was this Voltaire Telling a Story, and he decorated the four corners with clusters of hanging flowers, which are now in private collections.

Sorolla’s friendship with Calixto Rodríguez began many years earlier, in 1899, when the latter bought his first painting – Eating Grapes (1898) – from him. Rodríguez came to own over ten works by Sorolla, including two portraits of himself, one painted in 1898 and the other in 1905, and a third portrait of his first wife, Martina Lorente de Rodríguez. The engineer’s collection of paintings was so significant that he lent it to the ‘Spanish Exhibition of Art and Decorative Industries of Mexico’, held in 1910.

There is no further information on how Sorolla came to be given the commission to decorate Calixto Rodríguez’s house or how he came up with the subject, which was so far from the usual themes of his work. We know that the painter and his patron became close friends, and that the commission was given in 1904, according to a letter from Sorolla to his friend Pedro Gil dated 10 April 1904 in which he mentioned that he was going to paint some ceilings. The signature on the work shows that Sorolla completed it in 1905. In 1904, Sorolla was also painting another ceiling, for the Marchioness of Torrelaguna’s mansion, which he entitled Apollo Driving the Sun Chariot. This was another unusual subject in Sorolla’s oeuvre. We still do not know who suggested the subject of the canvas now owned by Banco de España, but there is a letter in the Correspondence Archive at the Sorolla Museum that provides further details on its choice. In the letter, Jacinto Octavio Picón asks Sorolla if the Voltaire titles that he wants must be those of stories or of other works, and adds his opinion that ‘given the nature of the ceiling, they should be stories’. The Sorolla Museum library contains a book by Voltaire which includes three stories: Candide, or Optimism, Plato’s Dream and Cosi-Sancta: A Small Sin to Achieve a Greater Good. We believe that the painting is of Voltaire telling Plato’s Dream, as Sorolla has drawn a figure in the clouds in the form of a naked man with his head between his hands, as if thinking or sleeping. Thus, Sorolla must have chosen a book from his library, depicting the scene in a way that could be called an allegory, by means of that figure in the sky over the heads of Voltaire (who has his back to us) and his audience. The painting belongs to the casacónor “dress coat” style (catering to the tastes of wealthy clientele), which was very popular at the time, and also reflects the historical period depicted in the canvas.

As with other works by Sorolla now owned by the Banco de España, it was acquired from the Lorente Sorolla family, the descendants of Sorolla’s younger daughter, Elena, who married Victoriano Lorente the brother of Calixto Rodríguez’s second wife.

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

 
«Mariano Benlliure and Joaquín Sorolla: Centenary of A Tribute», Museo del siglo XIX (Valencia, 2000).
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. Vv.Aa. Mariano Benlliure y Joaquín Sorolla. Centenario de un homenaje, Valencia, Generalitat Valenciana, 2000. 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. 166.