As the year draws to a close, anticipation grows for the much-anticipated Year of Sorolla. In Valencia, celebrations marking the centennial since the death of the master of light continue, while auction houses in Madrid and London proceed with sales that feature paintings by Joaquin Sorolla. This December there are at least two Sorolla works offered to collectors in the marketplace, highlighting the artist’s enduring appeal across Europe and beyond.
two techniques
One piece in Madrid stands out for its gouache work on a sizable sheet, measuring 50 by 97 centimeters. Ansorena, the auction house handling the sale, lists it as an original Sorolla work, signed and documented in Valencia during the artist’s Italian sojourn in 1888. The painting traveled to Buenos Aires after a sale to collector Matías Errázuriz in 1900, at a show led by José Artal in the Witcomb Hall. The Errázuriz family later contributed it to a Sorolla memory exhibition organized by the Spanish Cultural Association in Buenos Aires, with the image reproduced in the association’s catalog. Valencia’s art scene later included the piece in the 1973 exhibition on painters from the Valencia region. The estimated value around the time of discussion reached roughly €100,000.
Later, another Sorolla work from the same period emerges for a prospective sale in London. This small oil on canvas portrays a Valencia beach scene, and is offered by Sotheby’s with prices starting around €70,000. The work, a compact 23 by 33 centimeters, carries a rich provenance. It was donated by Sorolla to Jacques Copeau, the Paris-based general manager of the Comédie-Française from 1905 to 1909, and a collaborator of Georges Petit. Sotheby’s notes that Copeau helped organize Sorolla’s 1906 solo exhibition at the Georges Petit Gallery. The piece now resides in a private collection and dates from circa 1898, continuing Sorolla’s long engagement with Valencian coastal subjects.
More recent topics
Scholars point out that Sorolla’s impulse to paint subjects tied to his surroundings was reinforced by Jules Bastien-Lepage’s maxim to paint what one knows and to represent scenes familiar to the painter. This approach yielded canvases depicting nets mended, boats built, and fishermen at work, all anchored in the Valencian fishing community. Over time, Sorolla’s style leans toward impressionism, sharpening his oil sketches with a freer execution. That vigorous, spontaneous energy remains a hallmark of his work and explains the lasting fascination with his sunlit canvases, as Sotheby’s observers emphasize.
The provenance history of the Valencia beach painting is described by Sotheby’s as including a separate signature and inscription added by Sorolla when gifting the piece to Jacques Copeau, dating it to 1906. This nuanced detail adds to the painting’s narrative, underscoring the close ties between Sorolla and figures in Europe’s cultural scene during that era.