Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (Spanish painter) 1863 - 1923
Vuelta De La Pesca, Playa De Valencia (The Return From Fishing, Valencia Beach), 1908
oil on canvas
90 x 110 cm. (35½ x 43¼ in.)
signed and dated J. Sorolla B. 1908 lower left
private collection
Catalogue Note
Constrasting the imposing stolidity of the rich-red oxen with the glaring whiteness of the billowing sail above, and the darting iridescent light reflected off the ebb and flow of the shallow sea below, the present work revisits one of Sorolla's most celebrated subjects: fishermen returning with their catch of the day. It was a subject that had first brought Sorolla public acclaim at the Paris Salon of 1895, and which he had further developed in Sol de la tarde (Afternoon Sun) of 1903.
In the present work Sorolla positions the quartet of oxen four-square in the centre of the composition. The glistening water stretches out before them, the rippling reflections of the animals linking us to their massive forms. To either side the sea eddies. Behind the animals is the great bulk of the red-keeled boat. Laden with the day's catch, it is steered carefully into shore by the four fishermen aboard. Nothing interrupts the focus on the work in hand, no distractions dot the horizon line.
Painted on his return to Spain in the months immediately following his widely publicised exhibition at the Grafton Galleries in London during May and June 1908, Sorolla's masterful manipulation of the light, colour and form reflects his buoyant mood. In London he had met Archer M Huntington, traveller, collector and hispanophile. Scion of Collis P. Huntington, part owner of the Central Pacific Railroad, and his wife Arabella, who had acquired Rembrandt's Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer from Joseph Duveen (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), Huntington Jr was a born philanthropist. He became Sorolla's most influential patron and his commissions - in particular for the huge cycle Visions of Spain - would dominate Sorolla's work for the last fifteen years of his life.
Most immediately after their introduction, Huntington had invited Sorolla to exhibit at the Hispanic Society of America in New York in early 1909. Dedicated to the study and appreciation of all things Spanish, and Spanish related, Huntington had opened the library and museum in 1904. Excited by the prospect of his first exhibition in America, during the summer of 1908 Sorolla embarked on one of his most confident and extensive painting campaigns. Painting on Valencia's Malvarossa Beach, Sorolla's subjects alternated between two central themes: fishermen with their boats working the sea, as in the present work, or women and children enjoying the pleasures of being at the seaside. Occasionally he incorporated both themes.
The results were compelling images and immensely accomplished paintings of contemporary life by the sea shore. But in arranging his compositions, he also alluded to Valencia's and the Mediterranean's classical past: as suggested by the nude perfection of the boy and the wet fold drapery of the bata worn by the girl (fig. 3), or in the present work the front four oxen who, pillar-like, support the pedimental form of the white sail that billows above them.
Such inferences speak of a surety of expression and command of his material that conforms both to the cry of the Naturalists - the dictates and subject matter of Jules Bastien-Lepage in particular - and Sorolla's own pride in his native Valencia. Sorolla had been deeply affected by the work of Bastien-Lepage when he was first in Paris in 1885, and visited the French painter's posthumous retrospective. Bastien-Lepage had exhorted artists to be true to themselves, and paint what they know best. In painting the beach at Valencia, Sorolla was adhering to this principle, and celebrating his Valencian roots. But the oblique classical allusions that he made in his compositions also reflected his profound ideological ambitions for the region. As he wrote: 'One of my most cherished hopes is that in the longed-for resurgence of my country Valencia will take the lead in the industrial and artistic movement, as befits it's brilliant artistic temperament.' (Valencia, IVAM Centre Julio Gonzalez, exh. cat., p. 44).
Among the illustrious owners of the present work were the Barlows, their story a classic West Coast tale of triumph over adversity, romance, professional success and philanthropy. A graduate of Columbia University, as a newly qualified doctor Walter Barlow contracted tuberculosis. Determined to rid himself of the ailment he headed west to California in search of the proscribed cure: plenty of sunshine, a good diet and rest. Arriving in Los Angeles in 1897, he opened a surgery downtown to treat patients with the condition, and laid plans for the construction of a purpose built sanatorium for TB sufferers. He married well - to Marion Brooks Patterson, the heiress to a locomotive manufacturing fortune. Aided by his success, his wife's largesse, his patients magnaminity, and other donors (Mrs Victor M. Tyler, the first owner of the present work, is recorded as an early benefactor), the Barlow Sanatorium opened in Pasadena in 1902, and quickly established itself as the city's first large-scale treatment facility devoted solely to consumptives (fig. 5). In 1904 Barlow was instrumental in the foundation of the Southern California Sanatorium for Nervouse Disease in Pasadena, and - as an avid reader - he established a Medical library in his name (his extensive rare book collection is now in the Huntington Library). In 1924 the Barlows commissioned celebrity West Coast architect Wallace Neff to build their dream home: Villa del Sol d'Oro in the San Gabriel Mountains to the north-east of Pasadena. Then Neff's largest house, its facade was a two-thirds replica of the Villa Collazzi near Florence. Following Barlow's death in 1937, his widow Marion donated the present work to the Pasadena Art Museum, where her son was director, in 1946 she sold Villa del Sol d'Oro to the Sisters of St Francis to be used as a school (now Alverno High School), and downsized to live in the Huntington Hotel in Pasadena.
* * *
Born on February 27, 1863 in Valencia, the city in which he would begin his artistic career, first in the School of Arts and Crafts and, later, enrolling at the School of Fine Arts of San Carlos at the age of fifteen. Following his participation in the Regional Exhibition of Valencia in 1879, he travelled to Madrid where he presented three marinas at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts and made copies of paintings by Velázquez in the Prado Museum.
Sorolla is awarded his first gold medal in the Valencia Regional Exhibition in 1884 and a medal at the 2nd National Competition of Fine Arts with El Dos de Mayo, a canvas whose theme is historical. He receives a student grant at the Spanish Academy in Rome for his painting The Cry of the Palleter. Once in Rome, he spends a few months in Paris with his friend Pedro Gil visiting exhibitions Bastien Lepage and Adolf Menzel. In 1887, he submitted as the final work for the student grant, Father Jofré protecting a madman pursued by children, thus earning him an extension of the grant.
In 1888, Sorolla married Clotilde García in Valencia and after his return to Italy, he stayed at Assisi. After completing his training, Joaquín and his wife moved to Madrid, where he joined the painter José Jiménez Aranda and achieved the highest official distinctions with works on social themes: They still say that fish is expensive and Sad legacy.
After winning in the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1900, the themes on the sea, beaches and nature would gain importance in his pieces where he tried to capture fleeting moments of light. This led to a continuous and gradual research of light in his works.
Georges Petit Gallery in Paris in 1906 was Sorolla’s first solo exhibition, which earned him great public and critical success. The experience was repeated the following year in Berlin, Düsseldorf and Cologne and in 1908 he inaugurated the exhibition at Grafton Galleries in London where he made friends with Archer Milton Huntington, who suggested that he should bring his work to New York. After his New York success, the exhibition travelled to Buffalo and Boston and in 1911 his works were exhibited in St. Louis and Chicago.
Following his agreement with the Hispanic Society to paint a series of large canvases representing aspects of Spanish provincial life, which he would work on from 1912 to 1919, Sorolla travelled to Mallorca and Ibiza in the summer of 1919 where he painted his last view of the Mediterranean. Shortly after his return to his home, he suffered a stroke which would permanently disrupt his painting career. He died, three years later on August 10, 1923 in Cercedilla (Madrid).
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