Joaquín Sorolla Valencia 1863-Madrid 1923

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Description

Niña en la playa de Valencia (Girl on Valencia beach)
oil on canvas
34.7 by 50.5cm., 13 3/4 by 20in.

Provenance

Estate of the artist (Series L, no. 26)
Elena Sorolla García, Madrid (the artist's daughter); thence by descent

Exhibited

Madrid, Salón de Exposiciones Toisón, Apuntes y Dibujos de Joaquín Sorolla, de la Colección de sus hijas Maria y Elena, 1953
Madrid, Cason del Buen Retiro, Primer Centenario del Nacimiento de Sorolla, 1963, no. 77
Madrid, Galería Theo, Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, 1968, no. 23

Literature

Bernardino de Pantorba, La vida y la obra de Joaquín Sorolla. Estudio biográfico y crítico, Madrid, 1970, p. 161, no. 897, catalogued

Catalogue Note

Painted in the summer of 1916 on the beach at Valencia.

Sorolla's time in Valencia that year was squeezed between his on-going obligation to work on Visions of Spain, the commission that he had received from Archer Milton Huntington in 1911. Apart from his miniature apuntes and a number of portraits, for the past five years Sorolla had been working relentlessly on these murals destined to decorate the Hispanic Society in New York, a task that would not be completed until 1919. It was a huge painterly undertaking and entailed extensive travel to all the Spanish regions. But with the project taking its physical and mental toll, Sorolla took a break in 1916, joining his family on the beach at Valencia that summer and painting once more for himself.

Over these months Sorolla enjoyed a period of intense creativity, and painted some of his most accomplished works, including a run of paintings, the present work amongst them, that depict children and young girls in the shade of a make-shift bathing hut (fig. 1). Given Sorolla's formidable reputation for painting out of doors, his use of a bathing hut in which to paint that summer, suggests the very real need he had for a respite. In the process, however, this new departure in his subject matter provided him with a raft of new compositional opportunities.

Executed with the economy of means and the painterly flourish that had become the hall-marks of his style, the overall palette that Sorolla adopted was relatively neutral. However, in delineating the space in which the young girl is situated he used a wide range of hues, including greens, pinks and purples as well as a full compliment of ochres. The only local colour is the vibrant blue of the cushion on the right, a colour that also appears in the far corner of the hut, behind the figure, and which is reflected in the right side of the child's face. In the upper left quadrant of the canvas Sorolla uses a dry brush to indicate the parallel lines of the bamboo poles that comprise the screen, a feature that is more clearly visible in La niña curiosa (fig. 1).

FIG. 1, Joaquín Sorolla, La niña curiosa, 1916, Private Collection - DIGI: 241D05102