Away from the bustle of New York City, the Parrish Museum on Long Island preserves a historic charm. Founded at the close of the 19th century, the museum sits in a landscape that feels almost coastal in mood, lush and expansive. The nearby shoreline and wide greens create a backdrop that invites visitors to see a recurring theme in art: how light and garden spaces shape a painter’s vision. The recent exhibition titled In the Light of the Garden gathers two monumental figures of Spanish art who found powerful resonance in the United States. One is Joaquín Sorolla, whose rise is closely tied to the Hispanic Society of America, and the other is Esteban Vicente, a Segovian artist who embraced abstract expressionism in New York during the 1950s.
The exhibition reflects on how both artists used their gardens as sources of inspiration. For Sorolla, canvases from his Madrid parterre are on view, alongside works from the Sorolla House-Museum. Vicente’s pieces reveal the garden where he painted, accessible from his home in Bridgehampton, Long Island.
Part of the New York School lineage, Vicente joined a late-19th-century current in which artists cultivated gardens as a central source of creative energy. Sorolla stands as the most prominent Spanish representative of this tradition. The show highlights a forest-inspired selection and notes that the Valencian artist described growing up in Madrid. The exhibition includes 73 works borrowed from the Thyssen Museum in Malaga, the Sorolla Museum in Madrid, and the Esteban Vicente Museum of Contemporary Art in Segovia.
The Valencian canvases in the display span from 1916 to 1919, painted just before Sorolla’s passing, while Vicente’s works date from 1985 to 2000. The American museum explains that for Sorolla, the garden was a mirror of his larger artistic world.
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Esteban Vicente left Spain after the Civil War and built a productive career in the United States, earning recognition across major art circles. His works saw renewed attention in Spain after Franco’s death, and he received a retrospective at the Reina Sofía Museum. In 1999 he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Alfonso X el Sabio.
The first gallery juxtaposes Sorolla and Vicente with canvases that document their exploration of color and form. A second room presents photographs showing how these artists worked in the garden, while a final space features gardens created by other Parrish Museum artists, including Fairfield Porter and William Merritt Chase, a friend of Sorolla. Many works from this Long Island presentation have also been shown at the Bancaja Foundation in recent years.
This is not the sole Sorolla moment on the American exhibition calendar. A future display of private-collection works has been announced to coincide with a broader Year of Sorolla, and the Hispanic Society will lend some of its Sorolla pieces to the Sorolla Museum. Preparations are underway for a major exhibition to mark the centennial of Sorolla’s impact.
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At present, the only officially confirmed Year of Sorolla exhibit is an immersive show at the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències, with a report from Levante-EMV noting an exhibit titled Sorolla of Light opening at the Royal Palace in Madrid in February 2023 and touring Valencia beginning in June. The display will feature about one hundred digitized Valencia works.
The curatorial team includes Consuelo Luca de Tena, former director of the Sorolla Museum, and Blanca Pons-Sorolla, the painter’s granddaughter and a scholar of his work. Karmachina Studio will handle multimedia production under the guidance of Gianfranco Iannuzzi, a pioneer in immersive experiences whose work now circulates globally from New York to Tokyo.
Because the Year of Sorolla carries a national scope, the exhibition is planned to travel to other Spanish cities after opening to the public.