JOAQUÃN SOROLLA Y BASTIDA (Valencia, 1863 - Cercedilla, Madrid, 1923).
"Still Life with Flowers". Valencia, 1881.
Oil on canvas.
Signed, located, dated and dedicated in the lower left corner.
Attached certificate of authenticity issued by Doña Blanca Pons Sorolla.
To appear in Sorolla's catalogue raisonné, volume 1.
Inventoried number BPS491.
Provenance: Mongrell family.
Measurements: 64,4 x 53 cm; 85 x 74 cm (frame).
Flowers and the sea were essential pictorial motifs for Joaquín Sorolla, through which his state of mind and his love for life in the proximity of nature flowed. He often found a floral paradise without leaving his house, and his garden was always overflowing with fresh flowers. The painting in question is remarkable for its artistic excellence, a mastery which can be appreciated in every detail: in the reflections on the table (where the multiple tones of the roses, carnations, peonies, etc. reverberate), in the delicate glazes of the glass centre, and of course, in the splendid vase, where we seem to inhale the scent of each tulip, of the silky, shiny corollas.
As early as his school days, Joaquín Sorolla showed his fondness for drawing and painting, attending the drawing classes given by the sculptor Cayetano Capuz at the School of Artisans in the afternoons. Awarded a prize at the end of his preliminary studies at the Escuela Normal Superior, he entered the prestigious San Carlos School of Fine Arts in Valencia in 1879. During his visits to Madrid in 1881 and 1882, he copied paintings by Velázquez, Ribera and El Greco in the Prado Museum. Two years later he was a great success at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts with a history painting, which prompted him to apply for a scholarship to study at the Spanish Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. Having achieved his goal, Sorolla left for Rome in 1885, spending several months in Paris before arriving. In the French capital he was impressed by the paintings of the realists and the painters who worked outdoors. At the end of his years in Rome he returned to Valencia in 1889, settling in Madrid the following year. In 1892 Sorolla showed a new concern in his art, becoming interested in social problems by depicting the sad scene of "¡Otra Margarita!", awarded a first-class medal at the National, and the following year at the International in Chicago. This sensitivity would remain in his work until the end of the decade, in his performances on the Valencian coast. Gradually, however, the Valencian master would abandon the themes of unhappy children that we see in "Triste herencia", which had won prizes at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1900 and at the National in Madrid a year later. Encouraged by the success of his resplendent images of the Mediterranean, and stimulated by his love of the light and life of its sunny beaches, he focused on these scenes in his more cheerful and pleasant works, with which he achieved international fame. In 1906 he held his first solo exhibition at the George Petit gallery in Paris, where he also demonstrated his skills as a portraitist. In 1908 the American Archer Milton Huntington, impressed by the artist's exhibition at the Grafton gallery in London, sought to acquire two of his works for his Hispanic Society. A year later he himself invited Sorolla to exhibit at his institution, resulting in an exhibition in 1909 that was a huge success. The relationship between Huntington and Sorolla led to the most important commission of the painter's life: the creation of the immense canvases intended to illustrate the regions of Spain on the walls of the Hispanic Society. He is now represented in the Prado Museum and the museum that bears his name in Madrid, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Orsay Museum in Paris, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Fine Arts Museums in Bilbao and Valencia, the National Portrait Gallery in London and many others.