Joaquín Sorolla

Estate of the artist
Elena Sorolla Garcia, Madrid (the artist's daughter); thence by descent

Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, Exposition Sorolla y Bastida, 1906, probably no. 3 (as Orangers)
Berlin, Galerie Schulte, 1907
London, Grafton Galleries, Exhibition of Paintings by Señor Sorolla y Bastida, 1908
Rome, Esposizione internazionale di Roma, Spanish Pavilion, 1911
Madrid, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Sorolla en el Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid. 46 Jardines de Sorolla, 1958

Bernardino de Pantorba, La vida y la obra de Joaquín Sorolla. Estudio biográfico y crítico, Madrid, 1953, no. 799, catalogued (as Naranjos de Alcira)
Sorolla and the Paris Years, exh. cat., Munich, Paris, Madrid, 2016, p. 84, fig. 39 (illustrated in a 1906 photograph of the Galerie Georges Petit)

The canvas has been relined. There are three circa 5cm marks of old restoration somewhat visible to the naked eye upon close inspection: two in the orange trees in the lower right quadrant and one in the lower left quadrant. Inspection under ultra-violet light reveals some areas of old residual varnish and strokes of retouching addressing the aforementioned repairs, including some very minor spots in the upper left quadrant possibly addressing old paint flaking. Otherwise, the picture presents well and is ready to hang. Presented in a gilt frame.
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Sorolla, Clotilde and their children spent Christmas 1902 in Valencia with Clotilde's family, extending their stay there until early February. During that time Sorolla visited Alcira, some thirty-five kilometers to the south of Valencia, where he painted a series of six works depicting orange trees. Sorolla painted the present work when he returned to the region in late 1904.

Pure landscape formed a departure in his painting. Heretofore it had invariably formed a backdrop to a figurative scene, offering a context in which to consider the action being played out before the viewer. But in his Alcira pictures the dense greenery of the orange groves contrasted with the whitewashed walls of low buildings, or a farm house are presented as is: studies in the contrast of soft and hard forms, light and dark; lush vegetation versus bricks and mortar.

Sorolla's interest in this theme - looking at Spain's interior and depicting its countryside, subsequently developed into the series of gardens and city views that he painted to great effect between 1905 and 1910. Subjects included sweeping panoramas of Toledo and Segovia, and views of the gardens of the Royal Palace at La Granja de San Ildefonso and those of the Alcázar in Seville.

The present work was shown at the Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, in 1906 (fig. 1), Sorolla's first major one-man show outside Spain, and the exhibition that confirmed his status as Spain's leading painter of the period. Exhibitions in the following years in Berlin and London, where the work was also shown, confirmed Sorolla as the leading Spanish painter of his day.   

The rich foliage of Spain's orange groves also inspired Sorolla's artist-friend John Singer Sargent, in a work of four years later (fig. 2).