This 2022 ends artistically, ahead of the Sorolla year (1863-1923) in Spain in 2023. It’s the state museum that runs the capital’s house museum that signals to begin its production with an exhibition that very well frames what’s to come: Origins. And every artist, especially the good ones, has a deep knowledge of the history of previous art, studies the great masters and draws inspiration from them to start something new. Joaquín Sorolla would be no less. And for good fruiting, it is necessary to immerse the roots in a good substrate. Copying the works of great artists was a constant throughout the 19th century. The lists of painters and sculptors who requested entry to large museums in order to reproduce these great works first hand are very interesting. The Museo del Prado now keeps lists of well-known names that humbly begin to learn from the greats. What seems extraordinary, in fact, has been common among great artists since ancient times. Michelangelo, Bramante, and Bandinelli were taking notes and copying Laooconte’s sculptural group; Rubens asks Felipe IV for permission to copy the Titians, which were in the royal collection during his trip to Madrid in 1628; and Goya draws on Velázquez to give three fine examples of what it means to learn from other great artists—because it was copying a master.
Orígenes focuses on the initial formation of Sorolla. His first steps at the School of Fine Arts in Valencia and, above all, his trips to Madrid. The Prado gave him the opportunity to study and see Velázquez as well as many other painters who were an inspiration for the Valencian painter. But Velázquez is a great resource for modern art. In 2003, the Metropolitan in New York shows how Manet broke the tradition in which he grew up, thanks to his encounter with Velázquez, in a monographic exhibition dedicated to the French painter Velázquez.
That same year, Prado published the letters Manet had sent during his trip to Spain in 1865. The painter admitted how Velázquez “took him away” after visiting the Prado, and told his friend Henri Fantin-Latour that Velázquez is the “painter of painters”. The same thing happens to young Sorolla. And 19th century inspiration is not just found in Italy. Madrid and especially the Prado Museum and the San Fernando Academy become a must for every young artist. Sorolla’s original copies of Velázquez and their inspiration will be fundamental to Sorolla’s understanding of space and light, perhaps before his time in Rome.
Sorolla recognizes the European influence in her taste for eastern themes and national history that occupied her first production. These motifs associate him with the Romantic movement, but his contact with the great masters of the Spanish Golden Age taught him to help him find his own style and language.
We all know the great Sorolla of the Mediterranean light, its beaches, loose brushstrokes in connection with European Impressionism, but how the artist came to be could not be understood. This exhibition from the Sorolla Museum, which will go to the Valencia Museum of Fine Arts (30 March-10 June) in the second third of next year, is key to understanding what happens next. Sorolla learns to compose grand scenes outside of the apprentice’s usual work, but also seeks his pictorial writing. Try and find. He’s a smart kid who warned the public that in order to win, he must first win over the critics, and that, as he admitted to a friend, “you have to kill people to promote yourself and win medals.” year.