The strokes are learned, a calculated anthology of hooks, dabs, arcs and gliding swipes, sometimes as formulaic as his palette, which uses the same blues for shadow, the same range of whites for fresh linen and sunlight. This art looks fast, and Sorolla was known to be quick, not least because he was often working outdoors but there is a practised look to every picture. This effect is abetted by his high-chrome version of impressionism.

A breezy portrait of his beloved wife, Clotilde, from 1906, shows her focusing a brand new camera at the beach, and many of Sorolla’s paintings are lit and composed like snapshots. Orphaned at two, he was raised by an aunt who recognised his gifts, bought him pencils and paints and got him work as a lighting assistant to a local photographer at a very early age. Or getting down the amazingly complex performance of sunlight passing through the staves of a fence on a voluminous creased sail mended by half a dozen girls.Įven his scene of labourers in a raisin-packing factory veers away from the social concerns it seemed about to raise – figures jammed together in sweltering darkness – in favour of a bright yellow sunbeam that resembles nothing so much as a two by four plank, laid diagonally across the picture. In no time he’s back putting on the flash and dash of sunshine skittering across the shallows where several naked boys shine wet as his oleaginous paint. Photograph: © Fondazione Musei Civici di Veneziaīut Sorolla was not made for sorrow.

JOAQUÍN SOROLLA by Roger Diederen