Joaquín Sorolla

Estate of the artist
Elena Sorolla García, Madrid (the artist's daughter); thence by descent to the present owner

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

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

The canvas has not been lined and is securely attached to a keyed wooden stretcher. With the exception of one very minor spot of retouching in the extreme lower framing edge closer to the right corner, possibly addressing some paint flaking and only visible under ultra-violet light, this work appears to be in very good original condition and is ready to hang. Presented in a decorative gilt frame with a white inner slip.
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Painted in the summer of 1916 on the beach at Valencia. Sorolla's time in Valencia that year was limited by 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).

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.Of particular note is his use of the colour violet to convey shadow in the girl's face, a device borrowed directly from the Impressionists and the Fauves, and Matisse in particular. As early as 1909, Sorolla, who deliberately distanced himself from any formal association with the French Impressionists, concedes: 'with all its excesses, the modern impressionistic movement has given us one discovery, the colour violet. It is the only discovery of importance in the art world since Velázquez.' (W.E.B. Starkweather, 'Joaquin Sorolla: The Man and His Work', in A. de Beruete et al., Eight Essays on Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, New York, 1909, vol. 2, p. 40).