La Siesta en el Jardin by Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, in a nice large image file on Wikimedia Commons. Title page here.
Eye Candy for Today: Sorolla
La Siesta en el Jardin, also here
Comments
6 responses to “Eye Candy for Today: Sorolla”
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HavIng recently returned from Madrid and a visit to Sorolla’s home/museum I can vouch for the value of a visit, implied in your 2010 post on this artist: the 1400 or so paintings and drawings owned by the museum are brilliant in every sense of the word, from the life-sized beach scenes to the post-card sized plein air observations.
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Wow. I would love to visit that particular museum, as Sorolla is one of my favorite painters. I’m glad you got a chance to see the museum, and glad to hear they have such a large collection, I didn’t realize it was that extensive.
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Not all are on display at once, of course, since that would seriously impede presenting the house and studio as the Sorolla family used it. But his studio is rather large and there is a lot to see. The rest can be viewed in the Catalogo de pintura del MUSEO SORROLLA, re-published in large paperback in the last few years with all images reproduced, available only over there (I could not find it on Amazon, for example) and in Spanish only.
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Thanks, Daniel. I didn’t assume many would be on display at one time, given the museum is essentially Sorolla’s house if I understand correctly, but the size of the collection surprises me in that most museums based on the house of an artist actually have little or none of the artist’s work.
A monograph of his work is long overdue, the older, out of print ones are so expensive. I’m looking forward to this: http://www.amazon.com/Sorolla-The-Masterworks-Blanca-Pons-Sorolla/dp/0847839338/
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Much of the house is given over to exhibition space. Upstairs, in what would have been bedrooms etc, have been converted to a generous exhibition space, in April upstairs was a show of Sorolla’s portrayals through the years of his wife in drawings and paintings. Downstairs has his rather large studio and one other large space (receiving room?) now an exhibition area. His paintings, some of them quite large, continue elsewhere around the house. The garden features sculpture, some by Sorolla, some by friends and contemporaries. It was a pleasant surprise to find so much of his art there. At his death the family bequeathed the home and his estate to the state which has done very well by the artist with this.
The other great artistic surprise (besides the very formidable artistic repositories in Madrid’s several large art museums) was the tiny, and only slightly off the beaten path of tourists, restored chapel of San Antonio del Florida with it’s recently restored frescoes by Goya, the presentation of which absolutely sparkles. On the day we visited (during Spring Break) we were the only visitors apart from the guards. Goya’s tomb is there but we felt like we owned the place that day.
The country has invested substantially in conserving and presenting the best of it’s artistic heritage and, notwithstanding the current economic turmoil, the Spanish could not have been more welcoming and accommodating.
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This painting is a knockout. I love it. Sorolla is an amazing painter, but not that well known, so I feel like I am always discovering another great painting of his. Just stunning.
