València Fundacion Bancaja

Being in the splendid city of València I was particularly thrilled to have an opportunity to see an exhibition of masterpieces by the great València born painter Joaquin Sorolla.

The Bancaja Foundation brings together pieces from the Sorolla Museum in Madrid to Valencia for an exceptional event. The extraordinary circumstance of the temporary closure of the artist’s house-museum for its expansion and renovation allows for the display in the artist’s hometown of a collection of major paintings that are rarely loaned together for a single exhibition.

Comprising nearly 1,400 works, the Sorolla Museum’s painting collection is the most important in the world dedicated to the master of light, setting the standard for number, quality, and the variety of genres represented. 1400 seems rather exhausting, fortunately this show is made up of 59 pictures in a lovely curation that traces the life and artistic trajectory of the painter through a selection that showcases his diversity of subject matter and the singularity of his gorgeous style.

If there is one genre that identifies Sorolla, where he met his greatest recognition, and took his painting to unparalleled levels of mastery, it is seascape painting, in its many facets: the sea as a stage for work, the sea as a stage for pleasure, the sea as a stage for desire, the sea as a stage for the real.

But above all, for Serolla, the sea became a stage for artistic experimentation. Its constantly changing nature, the continuous movement of the water, its shimmering oil, its evident aesthetic appeal, the intensity of its reflected light, its atmospheric effects… all of this represented a constant stimulus and challenge for the painter. Around the sea, Sorolla composed a multifaceted iconography in which the daily life of the diverse people who inhabited its shores unfolded. There were many narratives found in his works: the animal strength of the oxen pulling the boats on the raging sea, the hard work of the sailors and fishwives, the carefree youth of their children, the adolescent idylls, the starkness of disabled and leper infants bathing in its waters, the elegant and modern optimism of Belle Épeche society… everything fit within Sorolla’s sea.

On the sun-kissed beaches of the Iberian peninsula , he enjoyed the distinguished summering of the carefree bourgeois society of the interwar period. Painting elegant scenes of summer,
the artist was himself a part of this gilded sophisticated world.

His family portraits remind me of Singer sergeant, with the same delicate colouring and sense of relationship between painter and subject, but Sorolla’s pictures seem more infused with love. He loves and is loved: love shimmers on these canvases.

I was surprised by the early work, which I’d been unaware of. As a young artist he flexed his extraordinary skill by following genre conventiions, and doing it well. The social realism of his Sad Inheritance!, 1899 depicts frail disabled children bathing at the sea in Valencia. The White Slave Trade shows young peasant girls unwittingly being trafficked by a raddled old Madame. This unsettling scene is counterpointed by two Orientalist-influenced pictures of “white slave” girls. (The “white slavery” scandal was a popular trope in late 19thC Europe).

But it’s the seaside paintings we all came for and these did not disappoint. Through fields of white and smears of colour pigment, I could feel the heat of the sun while I looked at them. And I felt the breeze. Serolla infuses his pictures with so much life they almost vibrate.

The exhibition closes on February 8, so if you have a free weekend jump to this fabulous seaside city, drink some cava, eat some paella and see this show.

Recommended: Vinnci hotels – there are several. Coffee and drinks in Ruzafa district. The food hall at El Corte Ingles. Olives at the Mercado Central. Sunset drinks at Atenea Sky terrace.

Have fun!