Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida

(Spanish, 1863-1923)

Patio de la Casa Sorolla, Elena Sorolla en el jardín

Footnotes

This work is to be included in Blanca Pons Sorolla's online catalogue raisonné with ref. no. BPS 2702.

This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued 2 July 1977 by the late Francisco Pons-Sorolla y Arnau, grandson of the artist and Director of the Sorolla Museum in Madrid.

Provenance
The artist (listed in Sorolla's testamentary as serie M, no. 90, inv. 1929).
Elena Sorolla, youngest daughter of the artist (bequeathed by her father).
Private collection, Spain.

Exhibited
Madrid, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Sala Goya, 'Sorolla en el Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid', 1958, no. 46, titled Jardines de Sorolla.

Literature
B. de Pantorba, La vida y la obra de Joaquin Sorolla, Madrid, 1970, p. 199, ref. 1815.
R. Vernacci, Photographic Archive Ruiz Vernacchi, Photo 85945, RV A-58609.


This impressive work, showing Sorolla's youngest daughter Elena standing at the threshold of the artist's garden, is among a group of late works painted in the Spring of 1920, not long before the artist suffered a career-ending brain haemorrhage. Gifted to Elena in the artist's testamentary, and known from the Vernacchi photo archive, the present lot has not been seen since its exhibition in Madrid in 1958.

Sorolla took great care in designing the gardens of his home in Madrid, creating, as Ana Luego notes, 'a double work of art...not only a garden but also a space expressly shaped by Sorolla's singular creativity... a more ambitious work in which both the general outline and the design of every detail... were the product of his imagination. The design was complex and demanding because it not only had to create a space that pleased him, representing his own particular "paradise", but also had to serve as a source of inspiration for future paintings.'¹

Drawing inspiration from visits to Paris, La Granja, Alicante, Valencia and Catalonia, Sorolla created 'a lyrical world of colour', a sectioned garden, peppered with sculptures, low walls, water features and columns; while creating a space for tranquil reflection, the gardens also offered the artist endless compositional opportunities, 'a multitude of framings with infinite pictural possibilities.'²

Sorolla returned to the theme of his garden for inspiration over sixty times; one of his last canvases, Garden of the Sorolla House (1920, Museo Sorolla, Madrid), bears a remarkably similar tonality to the present lot, both painted in an looser Impressionist style, typical of Sorolla's later works. In the present lot we see a glimpse of the magnificent garden, framed behind the standing Elena; the decorated walls of the house, the steps to the garden and the swathe of sunlight in the foreground, all add to the pictorial and tonal harmony of the composition.


¹Ana Luego, Jardines escondidos, Madrid, 2001, pp. 57-77.
² Blanca Pons Sorollo, Museo Nacional Del Prado, Sorolla exhibition catalogue, Madrid, 2009, pp. 467-468.