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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

CATALOGUE OF PAINTINGS
BY JOAQUIN SOROLLA Y BASTIDA
EXHIBITED BY
THE HISPANIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA
FEBRUARY 8 TO MARCH 8, 1909
WITH INTRODUCTION BY
LEONARD WILLIAMS

THE HISPANIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA
NEW YORK 1909

CATALOGUE OF PAINTINGS
BY JOAQUIN SOROLLA Y BASTIDA

THE ART OF
JOAQUIN SOROLLA
BY
LEONARD WILLIAMS

THE ART OF
JOAQUIN SOROLLA

I
BIOGRAPHICAL
JOAQUIN SOROLLA, the son of humble par
ents, was born at Valencia, Spain, on February
27, 1863. Two years later, the cholera epidemic
which was raging in that city carried off both his
father and his mother, and the orphan, together with
his infant sister, was adopted by his aunt upon the
mother's side, Dona Isabel Bastida, and her husband,
Don Jose Piqueres.
When Joaquin was of an age to go to school, he
manifested little inclination for his studies proper,
though he revealed a stealthy and incorrigible craze
for scrawling embryonic drawings in his copy-books,
until, impressed by the precocious merit and persis
tence of this extra-pedagogic labor, one of his mas
ters was intelligent enough to overlook his inattention
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to the tasks appointed him, and even made him sur
reptitious presents of material for the prosecution of
his hobby.
In course of time, since young Sorolla made no
visible progress at his lessons, his uncle, who was by
trade a locksmith, removed the boy from school and
placed him in his workshop, while yet allowing him
to attend some drawing-classes, held at a local school
for artisans; and here his resolution and his talent
swept off all the prizes; so that, on reaching fifteen
years, he was permitted to renounce the locksmith's
shop and finally devote himself to studying art.
He now became a student of the Academia de
Bellas Artes of San Carlos, which is also at Valencia,
and won, almost immediately, the triple prize for
coloring, drawing from the model, and perspective.
About this time, too, he received assistance from a
philanthropic gentleman named Garcia (whose
daughter, Dona Clotilde, he subsequently married),
and so was able to remain for several years at the
academy. During these years he visited Madrid on
three occasions, and exhibited, first of all, three
paintings which aroused no curiosity, and afterward
his earliest important work, namely, a canvas of
large dimensions titled "The Second of May." The
second visit to the Spanish capital was longer than
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the other two, and young Sorolla utilized it to his
best advantage by copying the masterpieces of Velaz
quez and Ribera in the Prado Gallery.
"The Second of May,"1 which represents the
desperate resistance of the Madrilenos to the French
invading army, during the Spanish War of Inde
pendence, is by no means a flawless work, although
the drawing is correct and spirited; nor is it even an
unusually precocious effort for a painter who was
more than twenty years of age. Yet it contained one
striking innovation; for it was painted in the open
air, Sorolla choosing for his natural and informal
studio the arena of the spacious bull-ring of Valencia,
where he enwreathed his models with dense smoke in
scrupulous reconstitution of authentic scenes of war.
In the same year (1884), another of his paintings
won for him the scholarship offered by his native
town for studying art in Italy. Accordingly, he re
paired to Rome and stayed there for some months,
proceeding thence to Paris, and returning not long
afterward to the Italian capital. However, at the
exhibitions, held in Paris, of the works of Bastien-
Lepage and Menzel, "Sorolla's eyes were opened to
'This painting is now in the Biblioteca-Museo Balaguer,
founded with the expenditure of almost his whole fortune by
the eminent Catalan poet, historian, and statesman, Victor
Balaguer, at Villanueva y Geltrii, a town in Cataluiia.
n 9 3

the revolution which was being effected in the his
tory of modern painting";1 and even after his return
to Italy, this novel and regenerative' movement in
French art continued to engage his preference. Al
ready, therefore, in the opening stage of his career,
the youthful and spontaneous realist of Valencia —
the compatriot of Goya and the fellow-citizen of
Spagnoletto — was captivated and encouraged by the
parallel yet independent realism of a German and a
French contemporary.
On his return to Rome, where false and academic
methods still pretended to their old supremacy, So
rolla, led by duty rather than by desire, produced a
large religious painting titled "The Burial of the
Saviour," marked by his wonted excellence of color
and of line, but not appreciably inspired by any
sentiment of deep devotion. This work, upon its
exhibition at Madrid in 1887, attracted some atten
tion, but was not rewarded with a medal. Two other
paintings, also shown about this time, disclose the
true direction of Sorolla's sympathy. The one, titled
"Un Boulevard de Paris," somewhat impressionistic
in the manner of Pissaro, depicts a busy evening
scene outside a large cafe. The other subject is a
1 "Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida,'' by Aureliano de Beruete, pub
lished in "La Lectura," January, 1901.
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sketch of a Parisian girl, treated in the simple, real
istic style of Bastien-Lepage, and therefore quite
emancipated from the harsh eclecticism of the
Roman school.
While visiting Italy for the second time, Sorolla
made a longish sojourn at Assisi, copying the old
Italian masters, as well as doing original work subtly
yet happily associated with the peasant-author of the
"Saison d'Octobre." During the next three years he
painted, among a number of other works, "A Pro
cession at Burgos in the Sixteenth Century," "After
the Bath" (a life-sized female figure standing nude
against a background of white marble), and the well-
known "Otra Margarita" ("Another Marguerite").
This latter, now at St. Louis in America, represents
a girl belonging to the humblest class, who has been
guilty of infanticide, and whom the Civil Guard con
vey as prisoner to receive or to perform her sentence.
The scene is a third-class railway-wagon, bare, un-
cushioned, comfortless — such as is still not obsolete
in Spain. The head of this unhappy "Marguerite"
is drooping on her breast and, with her blanched,
emaciated face and limp, dejected form, denotes the
utmost depth of human woe. Her hands are bound,
but a fold of her coarse shawl has partly fallen or
been drawn across them. A bundle lies beside her on
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the seat. Though it is painted out with care, this
work has scarcely any scope for detail. Nothing
relieves its melancholy bareness save the spots upon
the prisoner's cheap print dress, and the pattern on
the kerchief which contains her change of clothing.
This pitiful and somber scene is treated with a
poignant realism, yet with an equally eloquent re
straint. Emotion here is not obtruded, as in the case
of mediocre genre: it is not ostentatious, but sug
gestive. Flawless in technical fidelity, the figure of
the girl discloses that her moral weariness has over
come her physical. Her attitude of collapse proceeds,
not from a muscular fatigue, as much as from an
agony of remorse which has its fountain in her very
soul. One of her two custodians marks her with a
meditative and compassionate eye, puzzled, it may be,
at the vagaries of the law devised by man, and specu
lating why its undivided wrath must here be visited
upon the frail accomplice.
Other important paintings executed by Sorolla at
this time are named "The Happy Day," "Kissing the
Relic," and "Blessing the Fishing-Boat." The sub
jects of the latter two are indicated by their titles. A
beautiful and touching moment is recorded in "The
Happy Day." A little fisher-girl, who has received
her first Communion' on this "happy morn," kisses.
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on reaching home, the hand of her blind grand
father. The cottage-door is open, and the sunlight,
streaming through, lavishes its pure caresses on the
gossamer clouds of her communion-veil.
In this or the succeeding year, two of Sorolla's
paintings were exhibited at the Salon. Their titles
are, "The White-Slave Traffic" and "The Fishing-
Boat's Return."1 The former is at present in Amer
ica; the latter (which had been classified "Hors Con-
cours") was purchased for the Luxembourg.
The subjects of these two great paintings offer an
extraordinary contrast. The figures in the first are
weary women, huddled together, dozing and lethar
gic, in a narrow, low-toned, somber railway carriage.
But in the other work, the busy characters that plash
and plunge about the water's edge respire a very sur
feit of vitality; fishers and cattle bringing in the
boat, enlivened and illuminated by the glorious sun
shine of Valencia.
Between that period and the present day, we are
confronted, in Sorolla's art, with marvelous, well-
nigh miraculous fecundity and quality, interpreting
all aspects and developments of contemporary Spain
— portraits of royal personages, nobles, commoners,
1 Sorolla's "Beaching the Boat" (318) repeats the same majes
tic motive on a larger scale.
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of the artist's wife and children, of statesmen, novel
ists, poets, scientists, or soldiers ; landscape and pros
pects of the naked sea; the bright and tender joys
of infant life, the playful scenes of boyhood and of
girlhood, sorrows and problems and anxieties of
later age, the sordid schemes of evil-doers, the stren
uous toilers of the deep, the simple cultivators of the
soil, the village cares and pastimes of the peasantry.
Such paintings are (to quote the titles of a very
few), "Sewing the Sail,"1 "The Beach of Valencia,"
"A Scientific Experiment," "The Raisin-Dressers,"
"The Wounded Fisherman," "A Sad Inheritance,"
and "The Bath."
This latter represents the seaside at Valencia,
"whose manifold charms this artist renders so felici
tously. A woman with her back to us unfolds a
sheet, in which she is about to wrap a baby whom
another woman holds. The little one is naked, and
his limbs are stiffened by the cold sensation of his
bath. Behind them is the sea, furrowed by fishing-
boats with swollen sails, illuminated by the golden
glory of a Spanish summer's morning."2
This jocund theme presents a striking contrast
'Shown at Madrid, the Salon, Munich (Gold Medal), Vienna
(Gold Medal), and the Paris Exhibition, where the artist was
awarded the Grand Prix for his "Triste Herencia." "Sewing
the Sail" is now the property of the Venice Corporation.
' Beruete, op. cit.
on

with "A Sad Inheritance."1 Here also is the fore
shore of Valencia, though it is specked and vivified
no longer by those dancing sails and animated figures.
An air of sudden and depressing gloom seems to have
overcrept the water and the sunshine. Even so quick
are nature's moods to echo back our own. For here
are not the vigorous fisher- folk, able to work and
strive, able to win their independent bread. Instead
of such, we contemplate a score or so of imbecile or
crippled boys, the inmates of a house of refuge for
the cast-off children of depraved and unknown par
ents. The stern, robust, and noble figure of a priest,
towering above this orphaned and pathetic gathering
of frail humanity, extends a shielding arm over some
two or three. Weighed down by helplessness and
shame, these joyless creatures are not scurrying'
through the sand, or blithely plashing in the breakers.
The gaiety of healthy boyhood is denied to them.
Their drooping attitudes are inert, morose, and
plaintive, while, as it were infected fcy the agony and
pity of it all, the color of the sea is leaden, and the
sun throws out no cheerful and invigorating ra
diance, but is merely sultry.
1 This picture hangs in the Sunday-school room of the
Church of the Ascension, Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street, New
York City. It is kindly lent to the Hispanic Society of
America as illustrating a distinct type of mastery, by the cour
tesy of its owner, John E. Berwind, Esq., and of the Rector,
the Rev. Percy Stickney Grant.
on

II
CRITICAL
THE march of art in modern Spain has coin
cided with her evolution generally. When, in
the eighteenth century, the French or Bourbon kings
were settled on the throne of Spain, the very life-
breath of this nation emanated from Versailles; so
that, in order to respire at all, the luckless Spaniards
were compelled to simulate a sympathy with, and
ape the manners of, a race whose character is radi
cally different from their own. Even their literature
declined into a tawdry imitation of the French, re
placing natural and sparkling gems by dull and
worthless paste; the typical, vital, and inimitable
picaresque by nerveless and ephemeral travesties of
Gallic forms and Gallic modes of feeling. Nor did
the Spanish painters seek a less humiliating destiny.
Born in a shallow, pleasure-loving, empty-headed,
empty-hearted age, themselves devoid of natural
ability, unstimulated by the spur of popular approval,
of veracious and ennobling art, they made no effort
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to shake off the cold, unedifying tutelage of Amiconi,
Giaquinto, Mengs, and other leaders of the stilted
academic school which in those days was tyrannizing
over Europe.
Such, of the so-called painters of that lamentable
and degenerate time, were Ferro, and Gonzalez Ve
lazquez, Bayeu, Castillo, and Maella — names that
have nearly perished with the mediocrities who bore
them. Excepting one alone, the rest of Spanish ar
tists were no better. For in this sterile wilderness of
weeds, one flower sprang up unchoked and reached
its plenitude of beauty and maturity; one bright
though solitary beacon cast its cheering glow across
these gloomy decades of frivolity, corruption, and
routine. Francisco Goya is the second in importance of all
Spanish painters. His life and work alike require
to be summed up in contradictory and complex terms.
Sprung from the humblest class, the son of simple
tillers of the soil,1 he grew to be a courtier and the
pampered confidant of princes; and yet he never
weeded out the primitive rudeness from his peasant
temper. A coarse, uneducated man, his character,
though greatly resolute in certain crises, was swayed
1 Goya was born on March 30 or 31, 1746, at Fuendetodos, a
wretched village in a sparsely populated part of Aragon.

alternately by generous and by ignoble feeling. His
sense of humor was inherently profound; but it ob
tained together with a rooted disbelief in human
good, so that a mingled and discordant bitterness
attends his very laughter. This taint of pessimism
caused him to bestow his preferential notice on the
uglier side of life — its elements of cowardice or
fanaticism, of avarice, hypocrisy, or sensuality— and
hence his characters, though admirably truthful in
the main, seldom excite our pleasurable interest. Al
though at heart a democrat and revolutionary, and
an unaffected hater of oppression and oppressive in
stitutions, such as the army, church, and aristocracy
of Spain while these were influenced by the earlier
Bourbons, he was, notwithstanding, from time to
time, himself a sycophant or tyrant. His sturdy self-
reliance frequently assumed the form of arrant and
offensive selfishness. His intimacy with the elevated
classes wrought him chiefly harm. Viewing their
vices with a thinly veiled contempt, he lacked the
moral stamina to guard himself from their good
nature and complete his life-work unsupported by
their patronage. His correspondence, written in a
tumid, egotistic style, confirms his greed of money
and of fame; which greed, although his art is
Spanish to the core, seduced his private conduct from
C253

the patriotic path, and caused him to accept, with
unbecoming haste, a salaried yet opprobrious com
mission from the French usurper.1
His work embraces every class of subject— por
traiture and genre, pure landscape, mistitled render
ings of biblical history,2 popular and rustic scenes,
with or without a landscape setting, studies and
sketches in the picaresco mood, uniting sarcasm with
drollery. We note in him, as Pedro de Madrazo has
declared, "the realism of Velazquez, the fantasy of
Hogarth, the energy of Rembrandt, the delicacy of
Titian, Veronese, and Watteau." Powerless to create
imaginative pictures of the future or the past, he
viewed the life about him with an actual, robust re
gard, focusing his undistracted vision on the present
only. His art, while yet conspicuously original,
reveals throughout the influence of Velazquez; for
though he did not imitate that mighty realist, he
learned from him to look at nature with a clear,
direct, truth-seeking eye. His love of brilliant colors,
finely juxtaposed or blended with consummate taste,
seems to have been suggested by Tiepolo; for while
1 Namely, to choose, in company with the painters Napoli and
Maella, the representative collection of old masters which was
removed to Paris by Napoleon.
2 1 say mistitled, for all of Goya's so-called mythological or
sacred characters are faithful portraits of the people of his time.
l2^

the coloring of Velazquez is restrained and sad,
Goya's is the very soul of brilliancy. The sitters of
Velazquez wear a look of indolence and boredom:
Goya's are pulsing with the very joie de la vie. His
rendering of popular and rustic life has all the honest
spontaneity of Teniers. His figures, even when
roughly and precipitately drawn, possess immense
vitality. His kings and queens, his courtiers and his
peasants — all have "business and desire." They
move, and breathe, and speak to us. They are our
intimates, and manifest their moment and this paint
er's in the restless and romantic history of Spain;
just as the figures of Velazquez manifest their co
existence with the ceremonious Hapsburg dynasty of
melancholy, semi-moribund Castile.
Both Goya and Velazquez are supremely repre
sentative of Spanish painting in a comprehensive
sense, as well as of the social character of Spain
precisely as it coincided with their several lives and
life-work. Each of these two great masters has im
mortalized the Spanish century which was his own,
and further, each was constitutionally suited to his
native century. For the high-born painter of the two
was the child of an aristocratic age, and the low-born
painter was the child of a plebeian— or (if I may
coin the word) plebeianized age. This happy fact
on

has caused them to bequeath to us the absolute his
toric truth; for Spain beneath the Hapsburg rule
was eminently jealous and observant of her Visi-
gothic and blue-blooded origin, and Spain beneath
the rule of the Bourbons was eminently parvenu and
vulgar. It has been truthfully remarked that some
thing of the aristocrat breathes in the lowliest sitters
of Velazquez. Conversely, something of the ignobly
born breathes in the most exalted sitters of Goya.
In these consecutive yet eminently different periods
in the history of the Peninsula, we note a century of
native and ancestral haughtiness and hidalguia, fol
lowed by a century of enervating foppery introduced
from France. During the centuries of Hapsburg
rule, it was regarded as a deep disgrace for even the
humble classes to pursue a trade, and nearly all the
trades in the Peninsula were exercised by foreigners,
who consumed her energies just as the foreigner is
consuming British energies to-day.
Goya died and was buried at Bordeaux in 1828.
He left no pupils worthy to be thus denominated; so
that his influence, though destined to develop more
and more as time rolled on, has only operated at a
lengthy distance from his death. The cause of this
was simple. Spain, in the opening quarter of the
nineteenth century, was too distracted by internal
on

strife, as well as by the foreigner's tempestuous in
vasion of her soil, to turn her troubled eyes to art.
When she recovered from the nightmare grasp of
those calamities, she found herself the child of other
times and other tendencies. A second period of
French influence — that of David and his pompous
sect — had now succeeded to the cold academism of
the previous century. This newer influence, con
veyed across the Pyrenees by Juan Ribera, Jose Apa-
ricio, and Jose de Madrazo — three Spanish painters
whose inborn ability was spoiled by their Parisian
training— was but a borrowed and reflected light at
best, and rapidly flickered out in Spain, just as the
parent light had flickered out in France.
The romantic movement crossed the Spanish fron
tier toward the year 1835 ; yet its effect was unregen-
erative here, because, as I have shown, it sprang from
a factitious and delusive origin. Among the ardent
and impressionable sons of Spain who gave their
unconditional allegiance to this movement, were three
unquestionably gifted poets— Zorrilla, Espronceda,
and the Duke of Rivas; but since the talent and
enthusiasm of her painters were by no means so pro
nounced, it acted on these latter far less powerfully.
It has even been said that art in the Peninsula re
mained entirely unaffected by the French Roman-
on

tic School, much of whose influence is, however,
noticeable in the work of Ferrant, Elbo, Esquivel,
Tejeo, Jenaro Perez Villaamil, and Gutierrez de
la Vega.
These men were very mediocre artists, but one of
them, Jenaro Perez Villaamil, possessed a comical
arid striking personality. He styled himself a land
scape-painter, and professed to teach this subject at
the National Academy of Art. Nevertheless, as
Martin Rico tells us in his entertaining Memoir, the
members of Jenaro's class were not allowed on any
terms to stray into the open air. Each of them was
immured within a small and feebly lighted room, to
gether with his requisite materials and a pile of
lithograph reproductions of the old Dutch masters.
From these the student picked a fragment here and
there, combined these elements as best he could into
the semblance of a drawing, applied a coat or two of
color, and handed in the whole concoction as a nat
ural and harmonious landscape.
The methods of Jenaro Perez Villaamil himself
were no less singular. He seldom uttered any criti
cism to his flock, but sometimes took a brush and
lighted up their lurid labors by the introduction of a
fancy sunset. His own were executed in the follow
ing manner: gathering a lump of sepia, indigo,
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o
OO

orange, or some other color, on his palette-knife, he
dabbed it on the center of his canvas ; and from this
blot, says Martin Rico, "there would immediately
appear a range of mountains, a cascade, a forest, or a
cavern full of brigands. He gave me, I remember,
one of these productions. It purported to represent
a cross upon a rock, such as is often met with on
the roads of Spain, and underneath he placed the
sinister description, Tn this spot a man was mur
dered.' "
A false romanticism of this kind begets a fashion
for the futile painting of dead history. Such was
the case toward this time in the Peninsula. The prin
cipal leader of this movement, which attained its
crisis in or about the year i860, was Federico Ma-
drazo (1815-94), the son of Jose Madrazo, and
influenced, through his father, by the Frenchman
David. The young Madrazo's style, while markedly
eclectic as a whole, inclined at certain moments to the
realism of Velazquez. Had he been born a little
later, his work would have endured ; but as it was, he
and his age alike combined to neutralize each other
in the world of art. Their baneful influence was in
herently and unavoidably reciprocal.
Madrazo was an indefatigable and self-sacrificing
teacher. Among his long array of pupils were Ca-
on

sado del Alisal (1831-86), Rosales (1836-73), and
Martin Rico, who, though of an advanced age, is still
living. This artist, who departed very widely from
the theories and precepts of his master, is celebrated
for his rendering of Spanish landscape, such as the
snow-clad prospects of the Guadarrama, or romantic
nooks and crannies of Castile or Andalusia. "Few
painters," says a Spanish critic, "have hitherto ex
pressed with such convincing power the effects of
sunlight falling on our gardens or our towers, or on
the scutcheons and the window-gratings of our an
cient palaces."
Casado was a dexterous painter of bad subjects;
that is, of bygone history no longer serviceable to the
eye of modern art. His best-known works, such as
"The Battle of Bailen," "The Comuneros of Castile,"
"The Last Moments of King Ferdinand the Sum
moned," or "The Cortes Taking the Oath at Cadiz,"
fail to attract us at this day, not from deficient treat
ment, but because they represent no phase of history
painted, as all history must be painted, from the ac
tual and contemporary scene. A similar judgment
must be passed upon Rosales, author, among a quan
tity of other paintings, of "Hamlet and Ophelia,"
"The Death of Lucretia," "Isabella the Catholic
Dictating her Will," and "The Presenting of Don
on

Juan de Austria to the Emperor Charles the Fifth."
Rosales had a fine spontaneous gift for rendering
light and shadow in the mass by leaving out unneces
sary detail ; but he died too early to mature the native
talent which endowed him in a generous degree.
Had he been spared awhile, the realistic and reac
tionary movement which was only just beginning at
his death, would probably have reclaimed his vision
from the vain pursuit of buried and forgotten ages
to the profitable contemplation of a living world.1
The reaction in favor of realism which began to
show itself in Spain precisely at the moment when
the painting of dead history was in a manifest de
cline, was principally due to the tuition and example
of one single artist. This was the landscape-painter
Charles Haes (1831-98), who, though a Belgian by
birth, had made his lifelong residence in the Penin
sula. No field could have been better suited to his
labor, since the Spaniards heretofore had represented
natural scenery so very rarely that prior to the middle
of the nineteenth century only four— Mazo, Collan-
tes, Brambilla, and Montalvo— had practised land-
'Fortuny does not need to be included with this group of
Spanish painters. The character of his art is French, and
though he was born in Cataluiia, it has been justly said of him
that he was "educated outside Spain, lived outside Spain, flour
ished outside Spain, and died outside Spain."
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scape-painting as a self-contained and definite branch
of art.1
The classes of Charles Haes were opened at Ma
drid in 1856. As in the case of most reformers, the
outset of his errand was ungrateful. His pupils,
though attracted by his patient courtesy, laughed at
his landscapes scrupulously painted from the open
air, while they themselves, without a condescending
glance at Nature's self, composed, in the kaleidoscopic
manner of Perez Villaamil, "impossible flights of
orange-colored scenery, studded with imaginary
castles." Yet this was only for a while. Presently
1 Collantes and Brambilla are of slight account as artists.
Bartolome Montalvo (1769-1846) was not much better. Collan
tes (1599-1656) was a pupil of Vicente Carducho, and painted
figures and still-life, as well as pure landscape.
Juan Bautista Martinez del Mazo, who merits a higher rank
among the older Spanish masters than he actually holds, was
born at Madrid toward the year 1600, and died in the same city
in 1667. He was the favorite and most gifted pupil of Velaz
quez, whose daughter, Dona Francisca, he married. In addition
to his landscapes, which are relieved occasionally by the intro
duction of animated and attractive groups of figures, he copied
Titian and Rubens in so masterly a manner that these copies
have often been mistaken for, or wilfully passed off as, the
originals. The Prado Gallery contains Mazo's excellent "View of the
City of Saragossa," a work which is enlivened by a multitude of
figures sitting or standing, and conversing. Probably some of
these were executed or completed by Velazquez, who chanced
to visit Saragossa precisely at the time when Mazo was engaged
upon the painting.
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the manifest sincerity of Haes, together with the no
less manifest and truthful power of his doctrine, won
over a continually increasing section, both of his
pupils and of the wider public. Work of his own,
such as the noble prospects of the "Cerro Coronado"
and the "Pena de los Enamorados," as well as that of
two or three who studied under him, attracted much
attention at the series of biennial exhibitions which
had recently been organized in the capital of Spain.
A genuine and deep-seated sympathy with realism
declared itself in every phase of Spanish art. Even
the painters of dead history were touched by it, and
aimed at better coloring and better composition, or
else, more wisely still, forsook their arid ground and
struck aside into the fertile fields of portraiture and
landscape. This was about the time when the Pre-Raphaelites
in England and the Impressionists in France were
almost simultaneously beginning to be known. Hap
pily for Spain, the fallacies of our British Brother
hood were never wafted to her shore. Not so,
however, with Impressionism, which has affected
Spanish painting in a sensible degree, though some
what locally. Toward the concluding quarter of the
nineteenth century, the influence of the French plein-
airiste group extended into Catalufia, where the re-
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spective styles of Rousseau, Diaz, Millet, Courbet,
and Corot were zealously reflected by the painters
Baixeras, Planella, Pellicer, Mercade, Sans, Fabres,
Urgell, and Vayreda.
Nevertheless, this change was eminently for the
good of the Peninsula. Hitherto the merest ap
panage of France, she now regained her own volition,
and began to be once more herself. Sorolla, Gon
zalez Bilbao, Rusinol, Meifren, Mir, and Pla among
her painters ; Blay, Benlliure, and Querol among her
sculptors— these and many others are the virile
artist-offspring of a hopeful and rejuvenated Spain,
who cleared from before her eyes the mists of anti
quated prejudice, and newly looked about her unto
life. Not only at Madrid, but in a nucleus of the
provinces, and thence, by rapid and successive im
pulses, throughout the greater portion of the land,
such artists, stimulated, like all other classes of the
Spaniards, by this fortunate awakening, busied them
selves to render in a natural, unidealized, and un-
academic form, the manifold customs and emotions
of her laborer, artisan, and peasant people. The
painters Fierros, Plasencia, Souto, Uria, Silvio Fer
nandez, Pradilla, and Martinez Abades in Galicia and
Asturias; Moreno Carbonero, Blanco Coris, Ville-
gas, and Garcia Ramos in Andalusia; Cebrian, Se-
on

nent, Albert, Mezquita, Leonar, and Amoros in
Valencia — deserve the principal credit of this move
ment. So that, in modern Spanish art, the landscape
and the rural or bucolic styles were twin productions
of a little later than the middle of the nineteenth cen
tury, and were associated by a brotherly intimacy.
Part of their character was assimilated from a for
eign source. The other part is traceable, through
Goya and the general line of Spanish realism, to
Velazquez. Thus there had come to pass, originating, at a
lapse of more than half a century, from the blunt,
uncompromising realism of Francisco Goya, a vig
orous, wide-reaching, and successful agitation to
revive the style of rustic genre. Though not the first
in literal priority, Sorolla is undoubtedly the first in
rank and consequence of the initiators of this move
ment. His industry endowed their efforts with a
vital and enduring force. His genius was the ori-
flamme. that led them on to victory. His art, at once
original and national, assisted, by its technical and
spiritual grandeur, to remove their need of foreign
tutelage, fixing the proper middle-line between the
riot of Impressionism and the lethargy of routine,
reading the glorious nature-truth for good and all,
and manifesting to the world innumerable excel-
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lencies of the scenery and customs of contemporary
Spain. Sincerity and actuality and sympathy— here are
the qualities which make Sorolla's renderings of
Spanish life at once so beautiful and so robust,
establishing our belief that not only are they of vital
interest now, but of a value which shall palpitate in
far futurity. All painting that is truly great depends
infallibly upon the interaction of two kinds of power
in the artist. The one kind is the moral, intellectual,
and emotional power resulting from sincerity and
actuality and sympathy: the other is the manual and
material power of technique. The power of the
heart creates and is created by the power of the hand.
Not otherwise have the privileged heart and hand
combined to form and animate the art of Joaquin
Sorolla. In the domain of art, sincerity, although related to,
is not identical with sympathy. It is a less exalted
gift, bearing a close affinity to conscientiousness.
Many a painter is sincere, who is not also sympathetic.
Even the sincerest seeker after truth may be mistaken
in his quest. The form he finds may be conventional,
supposititious truth, wearing the guise of truth by
some impertinent misnomer. But sympathy points
forward to the undivided truth; points to a vital
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o

figure, not a shadow; not to artifice, but natural
emotion. Duty alone may prompt sincerity, but sym
pathy in its genuine form is traceable to genius.
True sympathy has more prevision than sincerity.
Mere sincerity implies dependence on another; but
thorough sympathy is strong enough to stand alone.
And when, attended by technique and actuality, sin
cerity and sympathy combine, then the result is not a
fractionary, latent, or inactive, but a perfect, potent,
and amazingly creative genius.
I copy in extenso Ruskin's words on actuality in
painting; which words, though undeservedly included
with his indefensible defense of the Pre-Raphaelites,
are in themselves closely expressive of the truth.
"What do you at present mean," he asked, "by his
torical painting? Nowadays, it means the endeavor
ing, by the power of imagination, to portray some
historical event of past days. But in the middle
ages, it meant representing the acts of their own
days ; and that is the only historical painting worth a
straw. Of all the wastes of time and sense which
modernism has invented — and they are many — none
are so ridiculous as this endeavor to . represent past
history. What do you suppose our descendants will
care for our imaginations of the events of former
days? Suppose the Greeks, instead of representing
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46

their own warriors as they fought at Marathon, had
left us nothing but their imaginations of Egyptian
battles ; and suppose the Italians, in like manner, in
stead of portraits of Can Grande and Dante, or of
Leo the Tenth and Raphael, had left us nothing but
imaginary portraits of Pericles and Miltiades? What
fools we should have thought them ! how bitterly we
should have been provoked with their folly ! And that
is precisely what our descendants will feel towards
us, so far as our grand historical and classical schools
are concerned. What do we care, they will say, what
those nineteenth-century people fancied about Greek
and Roman history ! If they had left us a few plain
and rational sculptures and pictures of their own
battles, and their own men, in their everyday dress,
we should have thanked them. Well, but, you will
say, we have left them portraits of our great men,
and paintings of our great battles. Yes, you have in
deed, and that is the only historical painting that you
either have, or can have ; but you don't call that his
torical painting. ... As you examine into the
career of historical painting, you will be more and
more struck with the fact I have this evening stated
to you,— that none was ever truly great but that
which represented the living forms and daily deeds
of the people among whom it arose ; — that all precious
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historical work records, not the past, but the
present." Spain is above all other lands the land of realists ;
that is, in art, of painters of the actual. From first
to last the life-work of Velazquez, which consists of
portraits, landscapes,1 genre, and renderings of so-
called mythological or sacred subjects, is real and
therefore actual. It is completely and consistently
non-retrospective, non-archaic. All of it is truthfully
to be defined as portraiture, using this term, not in the
circumscribed and ordinary sense, but as it was
pointed out by Bastien-Lepage, who wisely said, "I
believe that everything in nature, even a tree, even
still-life, should be treated as a portrait." For so it
is, a portrait; and all painting is, or should be, por
traiture. Velazquez had no speculation for the past. His
eye and genius were in sympathy with his age alone.
His only scope was portraiture. His canvases display
1 The landscapes and the landscape-backgrounds of Velazquez
are not only sovereign and insuperable in technique, but abso
lutely sympathetic, actual, and unconventional. Together with
a thousand other paintings by the older masters, they constitute
a crushing refutation of that "irresponsible and dogmatic"
phrase by Ruskin — "None before Turner had lifted the veil
from the face of nature; the majesty of the hills and forests
had received no interpretation, and the clouds passed unrecorded
from the face of the heaven which they adorned, and of the
earth to which they ministered."
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to us the manifold component characters of his cen
tury. His Christ and his Madonna, his JEsop and
Menippus, his Mars, and Mercury, and Vulcan, are
simply, and despite their fanciful appellations, Span
iards of his very time; not fictions simulated from
past history, but facts proceeding from the native
circumstances of his own. His Christ is not heroic
and gigantic, in the muscular, mythologizing style of
Michelangelo; not a conventional embodiment of
virtue, but the actual figure of a man.
Closely akin to actuality is swiftness. Protracted
workmanship in painting violates the triple truth of
light and shade and atmosphere. All beings and all
things whose aspect, as our vision apprehends them,
is effected by the vivifying influence of the sun or
moon, change in that aspect from one fraction of
each instant to the fraction following. Their con
stant state is not stagnation but vibration. Their
symbol is a point and not a line. Therefore the
painter needs to catch their infinite transitions with
an infinite rapidity; to render, by the limited means
at his command, unlimited variety; and, by accom
plishing the maximum of technical exactness with
the minimum expenditure of time, by one endeavor
to achieve a twofold conquest.
In every artist of true capability, this power of
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swiftness was existent at his birth, though further and
assiduous discipline alone can strengthen him to seize
and to retain those evanescent and elusive semblances
in nature. The secret of all realism, all "impression
ism" proper, is contained in this— the very same which
is unfolded by the early realists in splendid and im
perious silence, and subsequently, in a clamorous and
ostentatious fashion, by the modern French Impres
sionists. Sorolla, who proclaims it quietly and nobly
in his painting, in our familiar talk assures me that
its knowledge beat within him at all moments, just as
rhythmical and constant as the beatings of his heart.
"It came to me," he says, "together with my earliest
sympathy with nature. My studies in the open air
cannot admit of lengthy execution. I feel that if I
painted slowly, I positively could not paint at all."
All painters, who have painted slowly have pro
duced their labor at a sacrifice of atmosphere and
natural truth. The finest atmosphere in all the world
of painting is the background of the "Las Meninas"
of Velazquez, which is reproductive of a natural and
accustomed depth of gloom. Examining this back
ground through a lens, we find Velazquez to have
moved his brush, charged with thin color, in a swift
and spacious sweep. The coating is diaphanous
throughout. The very texture of the canvas is not
on

smothered up, but utilized to convey the semblance of
tenuity. Sympathy promotes and regulates the artist's sense
of value. Much error has been propagated in this
matter of artistic values. "All things," protested
Courbet, in reply to certain of his critics, "are of an
equal value to the painter." Here lurks a pseudo-
truism. All things are not of equal value unto na
ture's self. This is precisely where the painter must
be able to discriminate. In nature and, by conse
quence, in art, the value of all objects is not constant,
but fluctuating; not homogeneous, but diverse. All
things, as Ruskin pointed out, are "coexistent and yet
separate." No absolute isolation is conceivable in
nature. A spear, a plant, a tree, a piece of clothing —
any object that you please — has its particular value,
and again, that other value which accrues to it from
casual or intended circumstances. Its incidental or
premeditated neighborhood to other objects modifies
these values by contributing to them other and con
tingent values. These supplementary and complex
values, interacting with its very own, affect it as to
form and color, history, locality, and even ethics. In
"The Surrender of Breda," by Velazquez, the row of
lances have their quasi-isolated or particular value,
yet affect, and are affected by, the episode of which
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they are a factor. They intercept the sky, and in
fluence, and are influenced by, the shades and values
of that sky. Again, these formidable weapons of
Biscayan ash possess a martial and historic interest
Their shape and length denote a certain moment in
the annals of their native country. Who shall in
consequence pretend that, as they tremble in the
hands of living and victorious soldiery, they have the
same significance and value as a row of lances repre
sented all alone ?
Sympathy prompts the painter to discern and
extricate these values that exist and subexist in na
ture. While yet his composition as to color, shape,
and context must be nature's own, his system must
be happily though truthfully selective ; must be appo
site and opportune, as well as natural. It is by no
means unimportant whether his subjects meet our
eye in such a disposition or in such another one;
whether their moods, as he conveys them to our ken,
be regular or fitful, grave or gay, serene or agitated.
The robes of cardinals are red; but in one famous
portrait such a robe accentuates the sanguinary in
stincts of a certain cardinal whose ferocity upset the
peace of nations. That robe contains at once a gen
eral and a special symbolism. Its color overspreads
the character of the wearer in relation to a certain
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phase of history. So, both in nature and in art, the cir
cumstances which invest a person or a thing are often
as significant as, or more significant than, that person
or that thing considered in a state of quasi-isolation.
Sympathy, which endows our thoughts and actions
with a superadded life, also endows the painter's can
vas with a superadded vital power. It makes him
conscious of the soul, alike of persons and of things,
as well as of their outer and apparent form. Unsym
pathetic painters are precluded from a perfect great
ness. For only sympathy is able to perceive the
spiritual beauty in its actual and true relation to the
carnal. The ugliness or beauty of a human being
proceeds, not from the essence or the form alone, but
from the subtle interaction of the two. This inner
and this outer symmetry or ugliness are never disas
sociated. The relatively perfect human beauty is the
union of both symmetries; the relatively perfect
human ugliness, the union of both opposites of sym
metry. An outer symmetry may yet accompany a
crooked soul, or else, as in the "Portrait of an Old
Man with a Bulbous Nose," by Ghirlandajo, a want
of outer symmetry may be transfigured by a psychic
sweetness— by the spiritual symmetry— into a pleas
ing semblance that is almost physically beautiful. It
was remarked by Bastien-Lepage that "most of Hol-
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00

bein's heads are not beautiful in the plastic sense of
the word, but none the less they are singularly inter
esting. For, underneath their very ugliness and
vulgarity, we find the thought and feeling that glori
fies everything. The peasant, he, too, has his fashion
of being sad or joyous, of feeling and of thinking.
It is that particular fashion which we must try to
discover. When you have found out and represented
that, it matters little if your personages have irregular
features, clumsy manners, and coarse hands. They
cannot fail to be beautiful because they will be living
and thinking beings. The patient, conscientious study
of nature — that is the only thing worth having."
The love of truth is normally inherent in mankind ;
but few of us — alas, how very few — are able to dis
tinguish her unaided. For truth is not self-evident,
as most of us believe, but complex and recondite.
Prejudice and routine have largely veiled her from
our eyes. Our vision and our reasoning alike partake
of this deficiency. Speaking of painters in particular,
"It is most difficult," said Ruskin, "and worthy of the
greatest men's greatest effort, to render, as it should
be rendered, the simplest of the natural features of
the earth." And not alone such features, but every
thing that is a fact. So that the great historian, poet,
novelist, or philosopher in his writings, the great
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sculptor in his statues, and the great painter in his
canvases, make us acquainted with the truth by guid
ing us into her temple. Their sympathy evokes our
own. Their genius wakes and fortifies our dormant
sensibility. Chosen high-priests of nature in them
selves, their ministry and devotion elevate us also into
conscious and devoted worshipers.
In spite of all its faults, this age of ours is predis
posed to search whole-heartedly for truth. Yet we
are spoiled by one infirmity. Nerves are the cause of
nearly all our recent disabilities. Such is our inborn
aim, and yet our nerves resist and thwart us in the
consummation of this aim. For all our aspirations
and investigations after truth, we are a generation
that is preyed upon by nervous weakness. As if in
our infirm belief we soared too far above the common
earth to discipline our earthly constitution, our poli
tics and state-craft, our morals and our acts, are
handicapped by neurasthenia. Problems of sovereign
issue, such as the social or political relations of the
woman to the man, of capital to labor, wealth to pov
erty, inventive effort to executive, the veto of the
state upon intemperance, or ignorance, or sloth-
engage and interest us hourly. It is our honest and
collective aim to grapple with these arduous and am
bitious problems; but then, like the maleficent sprite
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escaping from Pandora's fabled casket, the demon of
our nerves assails us with invisible shafts and robs us
of our victory.
Among the past or present victims of this demon
we must count the masters and disciples of Pre-Ra-
phaelitism one and all, and nearly all the French
Impressionists. Their nature is not healthy, neither
is their painting. "In art," observed the Spaniard
Ganivet, "the logical is always superior to the alle
gorical." This truth was veiled from the Pre-Ra-
phaelites. Their view of life was either fanciful and
meaningless, or retrospective; and it is obvious that,
when we seek to disinter the past, we work with bor
rowed eyes and ears. "Every great man," said Rus
kin, in a lucid and deliberate passage of his writings,
"paints what he sees or did see, his greatness being-
indeed little else than his intense sense of fact."
Therefore Pre-Raphaelistic painting has no sense of
fact; since, for the sympathetic painter, every fact is
of his moment, visible and actual.
A healthy sympathy with art is not to be discovered
in our medievalizing Brotherhood, or (in the large
majority of cases) in the prestidigitation of impres-
sionizing Frenchmen. Yet good example may create
itself out of the ashes of the evil. Painting in Eng
land has advanced but lamely from the ruins of Pre-
03

Raphaelitism toward a better goal ; while, on the other
hand, in France, the saner masters of Impressionism
— notably Renoir, Pissaro, Sisley, and Degas — have
opportunely redirected modern art toward those
primitive and reticent "Impressionists" who led their
privileged and prolific lives before the troubled days
of modern neurasthenia.
No prey to nervous weakness is Sorolla; neither
was Bastien-Lepage. There is a splendid sympathy
between these two — between the peasant-realist of
modern France and the peasant-realist of modern
Spain. I make no effort to compare them critically.
It is a dangerous and often sterile labor, with respect
to art, to pry about in order to determine influences.
Influence in art is to a vast extent fortuitous. Few
painters can themselves explain its origin. "I have
no fixed rules and no particular method," pleaded
Jules Bastien-Lepage; "I paint things just as I see
them, sometimes in one fashion, sometimes in an
other, and afterward / hear people say that they are
like Rembrandt or like Clouet." Influence in art is
conscious, or unconscious, or subconscious. Who shall,
in any given case, definitively separate the three?
A chance inspection of a print or drawing brought by
Fortune's fingers from Japan, may have affected the
entire work of Whistler, and hence, through Whis-
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tier, much, or possibly the whole, of recent art.
Strong in the mass, the web of life is spun from
infinitely tiny strands. A gradual or abrupt accretion
of coincidences is the groundwork of all progress;
and what was yesterday an isolated accident, to-day is
an absorbing purpose.
And so, to state the simple truth, Joaquin Sorolla
and Jules Bastien-Lepage are just two parallel ex
amples of extraordinary peasant-genius. Their early
circumstances were the same. We read of Bastien-
Lepage, "His parents were poor, and he had to make
his own way in the world." Again, "At home or at
school, he was always drawing, on the margin of his
lesson-books, on the doors and walls." And again,
"His native courage and good spirits, together with
that invincible tenacity of purpose which was so
marked a feature of his character, stood him in good
stead, and helped him through the trials and difficul
ties of the next few years." These very sentences are
applicable to Sorolla. Both of these men unite a
peasant's vision with immense interpretative genius.
They are at once sincere and actual, profoundly sym
pathetic, mighty masters of technique. Their view is
not deflected by the neurasthenia of overculture.
They do not strain to found a blatant sect or school,
to disinter past mannerisms, to make themselves con-
on

spicuous by a novel idiocrasy; but to be Nature's
servitors alone, and by this sacrifice to minister to her
glory. They are apart from, and superior to, the modern
French "Impressionists." Their art is healthier,
more spontaneous, and more earnest. They are the
older-fashioned and the purer species of Impression
ist—that is, the simple realist. They are a new
Teniers, a new Velazquez, a new Goya, a new Con
stable. They may appear, to the careless critic, to be
innovators, but are positive descendants and direct
continuators of an ancient and illustrious artist-line.
And why, apart from by-considerations of technique,
have they accomplished so unusual a triumph? To
an immense extent, because the soundness of their
peasant-nerves does not affect their retina adversely.
They do not speculate or worry, but they see. Theirs
is the peasant-influence that our modern world of art
most needed. They are the very best corrective of
our physical and social neurasthenia.
"In order to express," says Beruete, "the subtle yet
intense vibrations of the sunlight, Sorolla sometimes
uses crisp, small touches of the brush, though not in
the extravagant fashion of the French Impressionists.
He saw and speedily absorbed all that is healthy in
the various phases of Impressionism ; and so, in paint-
on

ing landscape, he banishes from his palette black or
blackish, non-transparent colors, such as were for
merly in vogue for rendering shadow. But, on the
other hand, his canvases contain a great variety of
blues and violets balanced and juxtaposed with reds
and yellows. These, and the skilful use of white, pro
vide him with a color-scheme of great simplicity,
originality, and beauty."
A countryman of the Impressionists confirms this
eulogy. Camille Mauclair has stated of Sorolla's
painting, — "On y trouve, a l'analyse, des qualites so-
lides, une assise, un savoif, que bien peu d'impressio-
nistes ont pu montrer dans leur art captivant mais
vacillant, ou la vibration chromatique trop souvent
devore les formes et detruit la stabilite de l'architec-
ture du sol." He also comments on the swiftness of
Sorolla's workmanship, of which he says, "L'eclat
subit dissimule la longue preparation." The lifelong
preparation. The truth is better indicated here than
in this other sentence : "No great thing was ever done
by great effort : a great thing can only be done by a
great man, and he does it without effort." These
latter words by Ruskin point a superficial aspect of
the truth. Nothing at all in this world is accomplished
without effort; and in proportion as the "thing" is
worthy of achievement, so is the effort greater. But,
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in all cases of consummate art, the conscious effort
and the conscious pains were long precedent and pre
paratory to the fact, and therefore, when the latter
stands before us in a perfect shape, the effort is, or
seems to have become, subsensible.
An "infinite power of taking pains, " and concen
trating their effect in vast achievements which burst
forth on our bewildered and delighted gaze as though
they were unstudied and spontaneous, occurs but
twice or thrice in any century. Nature, as it were,
invests these rarely patient and perceptive characters
with her facility and sureness, her puissance and fe
cundity. Such, as an artist, is Sorolla. His vision
and his touch — "une main aussi prompte a peindre
que le regard a percevoir" — identify their purpose to
convey the pure interpretation of the truth. A spirit
of herculean effort is absorbed into his very being,
beating so close and constant that it is assimilated
with a facile yet emotive spontaneity. "II peint aussi
naturellement qu'il parle, sans meme se douter qu'il
en puisse etre autrement et que le tour de force per-
petuel ne soit pas l'habitude de tout peintre." The
difficult appears to succumb before the practice of
surmounting difficulty. He is unconscious, through
association, of the terrors of technique. The world
exists for him twice over. He is at once the eye and
on

hand of Nature, and his own. Although the strife
takes place, it seems no longer arduous to strive ; and
yet infallibly to strive is to obtain.
Therefore no subject that exists in life, or in life's
mirror, art, is too ambitious for Sorolla. Like an
athlete outstripping every other in a race, he is un
faltering, unflagging, and supreme. He has no false
direction to retrace, nothing whatever to unlearn ; but
has advanced from mastering slighter things to
mastering the very greatest. His method is the
undisguised and naked truth. Disdaining nugatory
pointillism and the petulant procede de la tache, he
practises no legerdemain of daubs and dashes. Where
color should be applied thinly, he applies it thinly, and
where densely, densely; rendering, as it were, the
natural technique of nature. What color is in actual
life, such is Sorolla's coloring; and history, as she
breathes to-day, will call to other generations from
his canvas.
Children exulting in their pastime, girls with their
skipping-rope, nude boys disporting in the sea, grown
people of all ranks and occupations, from kings and
queens in palaces to peasants pressing raisins in a shed,
nobles and caballeros of unfurrowed countenance and
creaseless clothing, ragged and rugged fishers, tanned
to an equal brownness with their nets, the acts and the
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8i

emotions of the coast or countryside, the placid har
vest of the fields or perilous harvest of the deep,
cattle of majestic stride that beach the boats or pas
ture in the glebe, subtle effects of air and light, the
luminous gleam that filters through a sheet, a parasol,
or a sail, the swaying of grass or boughs or draperies
in the wind, zephyrs that wanton in a woman's hair
or in the plumy foliage, the sprouting or declining
leaves, umbrageous depths of forest, the stillness of
still water, bellowing breakers, ripples that whisper
over and caress the sand — Sorolla's genius has ex
pressed them every one. "All of them pure veracities,
therefore immortal." His loving industry confirmed
and multiplied that genius. His diligent and loyal
servitude to Nature reaped its due reward. Now she
has elevated him beside herself, and crowns him with
her own felicity.
Pre-Raphaelitism, medievalism, pointillism, chroma-
tism ; wilful and capricious lookings back or lookings
forward; theory upon theory; fad upon fad— should
all these sickly innovations be committed to the tomb,
their loss will not affect us vitally. But alas for art
when man should finally discard his interest in the life
that is around, essential to, and interwoven with him
self ; when he should finally avert his eyes from fact
to superstition; should hold in less than paramount
Don

00

esteem the shape and soul of men and things, not as
they might have been before, or may be after him, but
as they bear him company between the actual limits
of his birth and death. For this — the earnest, undi
vided study of his days alone — alone can yield him an
approximated knowledge of the perfect truth; a
noble privilege in answer to a noble quest ; a triumph
worthy to be chronicled by Progress on the purest
and most lasting table of her golden archives.
Leonard Williams.

on

CATALOGUE

I. HIS MAJESTY ALFONSO XIII, KING OF SPAIN
(in uniform of hussars)

II. HIS MAJESTY ALFONSO XIII, KING OF SPAIN
(in uniform of artillery)

III. HER MAJESTY VICTORIA EUGENIA CRISTINA,
QUEEN OF SPAIN
IV. HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCE OF ASTU-
RIAS
V. HER ROYAL HIGHNESS DONA YSABEL DE
BORBON, INFANTA OF SPAIN
VI. HER ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCESS HENRY
OF BATTENBERG

HIS MAJESTY ALFONSO XIII, KING OF SPAIN

HER MAJESTY VICTORIA EUGENIA CRISTINA, QUEEN OF SPAIN

HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCE OF ASTURIAS

I Siete-Picos, Guadarrama
Seven-Peaks, Guadarrama Mts.
The mountain so-called, in the province of Madrid,
is about 7160 ft. high.

2 Covachuelas, Toledo
Covachuelas, Toledo
Covachuelas, "Little Caves," is the most northern
suburb of Toledo.

Las Pedrizas, Pardo
Las Pedrizas, Pardo
Pedriza, "Stony Tract," "Stone Fence." El Pardo,
a little town of 1800 inhabitants, 40 minutes by
tramway north from Madrid, in a royal park 36
miles in circumference.

4 Sefior Gomar
A distinguished landscape-painter

5 El Torneo, Pardo
El Torneo, Pardo
Torneo, "jousting-place "

6 Una calle de Toledo
A Toledo street

on

Vista del Torneo
View from El Torneo

8 Murallas de Segovia
Walls of Segovia
"Segovia is an unmatched picture of the Middle
Ages. You read its history on the old city-walls
with their eighty-three towers."— A. Gallenga.

Convento del Parral, Segovia
Convent of El Parral, Segovia
Parral, "Vine-Arbor." The now suppressed monas
tery is across the Eresma, to the north of Segovia.

10 Alrededores de Segovia
Environs of Segovia

ii Reflejos del Cabo, Javea
Reflections from the Cape, Javea
Javea, a town of 6700 inhabitants, on the Jalon, 45
miles south of Valencia. The cape is Cabo de San
Antonio.

12. El Clamores, Segovia
The Clamores, Segovia
Segovia is perched on a rocky hill, about 330 ft.
high, between two small streams, the Eresma,
north, and the Clamores, south, which join to the
west below the Alcazar.
on

13 Rocas del Cabo, Javea
Rocks of the Cape, Javea

14 Alqueria, Alcira
Farm-house, Alcira
Alcira is a town of 20,500 inhabitants, 23 miles
south of Valencia. It has many palms and orange-
trees.

15 Maria en Biarritz
Maria at Biarritz
Sefiorita Dona Maria Sorolla

16 Sombra del Puente Alcantara, Toledo
Shadow of the Alcantara Bridge, Toledo
This bridge at the northeast angle of the city has
one large and one smaller arch. It is of Moorish
origin (Arab, al kantara=bridge).

17 Castillo de San Servando, Toledo
On the heights on the left bank of the Tagus are
the ruins of the Castle of San Servando, erected
by Alfonso VI (1072-1109) to protect the convent
of that name and the city, and renewed by Alfonso
VIII (1158-1214).

18 Dr. Decret
An eminent physician

on

19 Puente de Alcantara, Toledo
Alcantara Bridge, Toledo

20 La Selva, Granja
The Forest, La Granja
In 1 719 Philip V purchased the granja, "grange,"
of the Hieronymite monks, seven miles southeast
of Segovia and began to construct the chateau and
gardens named La Granja.

21 Rio de las Truchas, Granja
Trout-stream, La Granja

22 Patio de las Danzas, Alcazar, Sevilla
Court of the Dances, Alcazar, Seville
The Alcazar, the palace of the Moorish kings, has
been the residence of the Spanish sovereigns since
the capture of the city by St. Ferdinand in 1248.

23 Adelfas Rose-bay trees

24 Canada, Asturias
Glen, Asturias

25 Pabellon de Carlos V, Sevilla
Pavilion of Charles V (Charles I of Spain), Seville
on

89

26 Puente de San Martin, Toledo
St. Martin's Bridge, Toledo

27 Naranjos Orange-trees

28 Cordeleros Rope-makers

29 Sefior Franzen
The photographer

30 Rocas del Faro, Biarritz
Rocks at the lighthouse, Biarritz

31 Puente de San Martin, Toledo
St. Martin's Bridge, Toledo

32 Pescadora valenciana
Valencian fisherwoman

33 Camino de San Esteban, Asturias
Road of San Esteban, Asturias

34 Estanque del Alcazar, Sevilla
Basin in the Alcazar, Seville

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35 Puerto de Valencia
Harbor of Valencia

36 Amontonando el heno, Asturias
Haymaking, Asturias

37 Casa del Greco, Toledo
House of "El Greco," Toledo
Domingo TheotocopuH, called "El Greco" (1548-
1625)
38 Maria con sombrero negro
Maria with black hat
Senorita Dona Maria Sorolla
39 Torre de entrada en Toledo
Tower of entrance, Toledo
40 Las Covachuelas, Toledo
(See No. 2)
41 Rocas, Javea
Rocks, Javea
(See No. 11)
42 Camino de los Alijares, Toledo
Road of the Alijares, "Stony Ground," Toledo
43 Familia segoviana
Segovian family

on

96

44 Escaldando uva, Javea
Scalding grapes
(See No. n)
45 Joaquin Senor D. Joaquin Sorolla
46 Elena HelenSenorita Dona Elena Sorolla
47 El Grutesco, Alcazar, Sevilla
"El Grutesco"
48 Playa de Valencia
Beach of Valencia
49 Velas a secar, Valencia
Sails drying
50 Naranjo Orange-tree
5 1' Nifio con la barquita
Little boy with toy boat
52 Viejo pescador valenciano
Old Valencian fisherman

53 Barcas de pesca
Fishing-boats

on

54 Puerto de Valencia
Harbor of Valencia

55 El beso
The kiss

56 Nino sobre una roca, Javea
Little boy on a rock

57 Bao de la Reina, Valsain
The Queen's Beam, Valsain
Valsain, an old and neglected hunting-chateau, two
miles from La Granja, built by Philip II and
burned in the reign of Charles II.
58 Escalera del Palacio, Granja
Staircase of the Palace, La Granja

59 Elena en el Pardo
Helen at El Pardo

60 Fuente de los Caballos, Granja
Fountain of the Horses, La Granja
The fountains of La Granja are superior to those
of Versailles. They were mainly made in 1727 by
Isabella Farnese as a surprise for her husband
Philip V, on his return after a long absence. He
said : "It has cost me three millions and has amused
me three minutes." The water is supplied by an
artificial lake, El Mar, 4100 ft. above the sea.
on

6 1 Otono, Granja
Autumn, La Granja

62 Maria pintando, Pardo
Maria painting, Pardo

63 Fuente de la Selva, Granja
Fountain of the Forest, La Granja

64 Fuente de Neptuno, Granja
Fountain of Neptune, La Granja

65 Huerto de naranjos, Valencia
Orange-grove, Valencia

66 Francisqueta, Valencia
Fanny, Valencia

67 Esperando la pesca, Valencia
Waiting for the fish, Valencia

68 Recogiendo la vela, Valencia
Taking in the sail, Valencia

69 Regreso de la pesca, Valencia
Return from fishing, Valencia
02n

ON

70 Pescadores de quisquillas, Valencia
Crayfishers, Valencia

71 Nadador, Javea
Swimmer, Javea

72 Elena entre rosas
Helen among roses

"JT, Idilio Idyl

74 Senor D. Vicente Blasco Ibanez
The eminent novelist

75 Arbol amarillo, Granja
Yellow tree, La Granja

j6 El ciego de Toledo
Blind man of Toledo

yj Pescadora con su hijo, Valencia
Fisherwoman with her son, Valencia

78 El bafio, Granja
The bath, La Granja

OO

79 Cosiendo la vela, Valencia
Sewing the sail, Valencia

80 Buscando cangrejos, Javea
Looking for crabs, Javea

81 Maria, Granja
Maria, La Granja

82 Joaquin y su perro
Joaquin and his dog

83 Sobre la arena
Upon the sand

84 Pescadoras valencianas
Valencian fisherwomen

85 Sefiora de Sorolla (bianco)
Sefiora de Sorolla in white

86 A la orilla del mar, Valencia
At the sea-shore, Valencia

87 Valenciana Valencian woman

CI063

88 En los jardines de la Granja
In the Gardens of La Granja
The Gardens of La Granja, laid out by the Frenchi
landscape-gardener, Boutelet, cover 350 acres.

89 Viejo castellano
Old Castilian

90 Excelentisimo
Senor Marques D. Estanislao de Urquijo
Banker and statesman
91 Hija de pescador, Valencia
Fisherman's daughter, Valencia

92 Elena y sus mufiecas
Helen and her dolls

93 Mis hijos
My children

94 Nadadores Swimmers

95 Baja mar (Elena en Biarritz)
Low tide (Helen at Biarritz)
96 Componiendo redes
Mending nets
[io8T

287

97 El bano, Javea
The bath, Javea

98 El baho, Javea

99 Encajonando pasa
Boxing raisins

100 Puente de la Selva, Granja
Forest Bridge, La Granja

101 Vista del Palacio, Granja
View of the Palace, La Granja

102 Vuelta de la pesca, Valencia
Return from fishing, Valencia

103 Al bafio, Valencia
At the bath, Valencia

104 Nina con lazo azul, Valencia
Little girl with blue ribbon, Valencia

105 Maria en el puerto de Javea
Maria, at the harbor of Javea
o°n

00oo

106 Instantanea, Biarritz
Instantaneous, Biarritz

107 Nino entre espumas, Javea
Boy among breakers, Javea

108 Jardin del Alcazar, Sevilla
Garden of the Alcazar, Seville

109 Camino de adelfas, Valencia
Rose-bay road, Valencia

1 10 Maria y su abuela
Maria and her grandmother

in Malvarrosa, Valencia
Malvarrosa Beach, Valencia

112 Huerta de Valencia
The Huerta or "Garden" of Valencia

113 Jardin del Alcazar, Sevilla
Garden of the Alcazar, Seville

1 14 Jardin del Alcazar, Sevilla
o*n

292

115 La Giralda, Sevilla
This tower, originally the minaret of the principal
mosque, was erected 1184-96 by the architect
Jabir. It is 45 ft. sq., has walls 8 ft. thick and was
at first 230 ft. high. In 1568 the cathedral chapter
commissioned Hernan Ruiz to build the upper sec
tion. The Giraldillo or vane is 305 ft. above the
ground.

116 Palacio de Carlos V, Sevilla
Palace of Charles V, Seville

117 Puerto de Valencia
Harbor of Valencia

118 Marques de la Vega- Ynclan

1 19 Puerto de Valencia
Harbor of Valencia

120 Al agua, Valencia
At the water

121 Casa de la Huerta, Valencia
House in the "Huerta," Valencia

122 Jardin de la playa, Valencia
Beach garden, Valencia
OO

01

123 Huerta de Valencia
"Huerta" of Valencia

124 Jardin del Alcazar, Sevilla
Garden of the Alcazar, Seville

125 Asturias Asturias

126 San Sebastian
San Sebastian

127 Puerto viejo, Biarritz
Old harbor, Biarritz

128 Playa de Biarritz
Beach of Biarritz

129 Playa de Biarritz
130 Playa de Biarritz
131 Playa de Biarritz
132 Playa de Biarritz
oen

M

133 Playa de Biarritz
134 Playa de Biarritz
135 Playa de Biarritz
136 Playa de Biarritz
137 Playa de Biarritz
138 Playa de Biarritz
139 Playa de Biarritz
140 Playa de Biarritz
141 Playa de Biarritz
142 Playa de Biarritz
143 Playa de Biarritz
144 La Concha, San Sebastian
San Sebastian, the summer residence of the royal
family, is at the south base of the Monte Orgull,
a rocky island now connected with the main land,
o*n

and on alluvial ground between the mouth of the
Urumea on the east and the bay of La Concha,
"The Shell," on the west.

145 Playa de Biarritz
146 Playa de Biarritz
147 Playa de Biarritz
148 Playa de Biarritz
149 Playa de Biarritz
150 Playa de Biarritz
151 Playa de Biarritz
152 Playa de Biarritz
153 Playa de Biarritz
154 Playa de Biarritz

155 Playa de Valencia
o°n

156 Playa de Valencia
157 Playa de Valencia
158 Puerto de San Sebastian
159 Puerto de San Sebastian
160 Playa de Valencia

161 Pasajes The beautiful and almost land-locked Bay of
Pasajes, which resembles an Alpine lake. The
Basque whaling-port from the 16th to the 18th cen
tury. From it Lafayette sailed for America in
1776.

162 Puerto de San Sebastian
163 La Concha, San Sebastian
164 La Concha, San Sebastian

165 Puerto de Pasajes
02n

o

1 66 "Playa de Valencia
167 Playa de Valencia
168 Playa de Valencia
169 Playa de Valencia
170 Playa de Valencia
171 Playa de Valencia
172 Playa de Valencia
173 Playa de Valencia
174 Playa de Valencia
175 Playa de Valencia
176 Playa de Valencia
177 Playa de Valencia OO

178 Cabo de San Antonio, Javea
Cape San Antonio, Javea

179 Galicia
180 Cosiendo la vela
Sewing the sail
181 Adormideras Poppies
182 Playa de Valencia

183 Malvarrosa Malvarrosa Beach, Valencia

184 Puerto de San Sebastian
185 Playa de Valencia
186 Locutorio "Locutory," in convents a place for the reception
of visitors.
187 Playa de Valencia
oen

1 88 Playa de Valencia

189 Cabo de San Antonio, Javea
Cape San Antonio, Javea

190 Playa de Valencia

191 Adelfas Rose-bays

192 Playa de Valencia
193 La Concha, San Sebastian
194 Playa de Valencia
195 Playa de Valencia
196 Playa de Valencia
197 Biarritz
198 Biarritz
o§n

199 Segovia
200 Asturias

201 Versalles Versailles

202 Playa de Valencia
203 Playa de Valencia
204 Playa de Valencia
205 Playa de Valencia

206 Patio del Cabaiial
Court of the Cabanal
In the season (mid-June to October) tramways run
from Valencia to the north through El Cabanal,
"Huts," to the bathing-establishment, Las Arenas.

207 En el rio
In the river

208 Puerto de Valencia
o°n

209 Playa de Valencia
210 Puerto de Valencia
.211 Playa de Valencia
212 Playa de Valencia
213 Playa de Valencia
.214 Malvas reales
Royal mallows

.215 Los geranios
Geraniums

216 Altar de San Vicente, Valencia
Altar of St. Vincent Ferrer in the house in which
he was born, at Valencia, Jan. 23, 1355 or 1357. He
died in 1419.
217 Playa de Valencia
218 Puerto de Aviles

219 Playa de Valencia
02n

220 Playa de Valencia
221 Playa de Valencia
i ¦
2,2.2 Mercado de Leon
Market of Leon
223 Playa de Valencia
224 Playa de Valencia
225 Playa de Valencia
226 Playa de Valencia
227 Playa de Valencia

228 Huerta de Valencia
"Huerta" of Valencia

229 Playa de Valencia
230 Playa de Valencia

i-

231 Playa de Valencia
232 Playa de Valencia
2^3 Playa de Valencia
234 Playa de Valencia
235 Asturias
236 Playa de Valencia

237 Mujeres jugando
Women playing

238 Playa de Valencia
239 Playa de Valencia
240 Playa de Valencia
241 Playa de Valencia oen

341

242 Mercado de Leon
243 Playa de Valencia
244 Playa de Valencia
245 Playa de Valencia
246 Playa de Valencia
247 Asturias
248 Leon
249 Asturias
250 Javea
251 Asturias
252 Leon
253 Asturias

o«n

254 Asturias
255 Playa de Valencia
256 Playa de Valencia
257 Asturias
258 Leon
259 Playa de Valencia
260 Playa de Valencia
261 Playa de Valencia
262 Leon
263 Playa de Valencia
264 Asturias
265 Galicia o°n

266 Malvarrosa Malvarrosa Beach, Valencia

267 Javea
268 Biarritz
269 Puerto de Javea
270 La Concha, San Sebastian
271 San Sebastian
272 San Sebastian
273 Playa de Valencia
274 Playa de Valencia
275 Playa de Valencia
276 Playa de Valencia
277 Playa de Valencia
oan

84

278 Lavanderas Washerwomen

279 San Sebastian
280 Playa de Valencia
281 San Sebastian
282 San Sebastian
283 Playa de Valencia
284 Playa de Valencia

285 El tio Pancha
Uncle Pancha

286 Senor Garcia
The father-in-law of Senor Sorolla
287 Nino desnudo, Granja
Boy nude, La Granja
288 Sefiora de Sorolla (negro)
Sefiora de Sorolla in black

osn

289 Excelentisimo Senor Duque de Alba
Grande de Espafia

290 Madre (Sefiora de Sorolla)
Mother (Sefiora de Sorolla)
291 Corriendo por la playa
Running along the beach

292 Despues del bafio
After the bath

293 Paseo del Faro, Biarritz
Lighthouse Walk, Biarritz

294 Nino en la playa
Little boy on the beach
295 Cabo de San Antonio, Javea
Cape San Antonio, Javea
296 Excelentisimo Senor Conde de Villagonzalo
The Count de Villagonzalo

297 Nino en el mar
Boy in the sea
oen

298 Nifios en la playa
Children on the beach

299 Barcas valencianas
Valencian boats

300 El hermano pequefio
The little brother

301 Nifios en el mar
Children in the sea

302 Naranjal, Alcira
Orange-grove, Alcira

303 Al agua
At the water

304 Nifio en la playa
Little boy on the beach

305 Calle de naranjos
Street of orange-trees

306 Jugando en el agua
Playing in the water

o«n

307 Playa de Valencia (Luz de la manana)
Beach of Valencia by morning light
308 Salida del bafio
Coming out of the bath
309 El nieto
The grandson
310 Alegria del agua
Water joy
311 Sobre la arena
On the sand
312 D. Francisco Acebal
Man of letters
313 Excelentisimo Sefior D. Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo
The most eminent living scholar of Spain. Born at
Santander, Nov. 3, 1856, at the age of 22 he became
a professor in the University of Madrid, and when
25 was admitted to the Spanish Academy. After
more than twenty years' service he resigned his
professorship to become Director of the National
Library.
314 Excelentisimo Sefior D. Aureliano de Beruete
An eminent historian and critic of art, especially
distinguished for his work on Velazquez.
o<>n

315 Excelentisimo Sefior Marques de Viana
Grande de Espaiia
316 Playa de Valencia
317 Sefior Granzon
318 Toros que se preparan para sacar las
barcas de pesca, Valencia
Oxen ready to beach fishing-boats, Valencia
Called in England "Beaching the Boat"
319 Nifios en el mar
Children in the sea
320 Mar (Efecto de la manana)
Sea (Morning effect)
321 Barca pescadora
Fishing-boat
322 Velas en el mar
Sails at sea
323 Vuelta de la pesca
Return from fishing
324 Barcas en la arena
Boats on the sand
OO

325 Estudio de barcas
Study of boats

326 Barcas pescadoras
Fishing-boats

327 Barcas Boats

328 Nifios en la orilla
Children on the beach

329 Playa de Valencia
330 Playa de Valencia
331 Playa de Valencia
332 Playa de Valencia

333 Redes a secar
Nets drying

334 Empujando la barca
Shoving off the boat
00

335 Playa de Valencia
336 Adelfas Rose-bays
337 Playa de Valencia
338 Playa de Valencia
339 Playa de Valencia

340 Leoneses Leonese peasants

341 Al bafio
At the bath

342 Idilio en el mar
Sea idyl

343 La nietecita
The little granddaughter

344 Senor D. Manuel B. Cossio
Director of the Instituto Pedagogico, Madrid, and
author of "El Greco "
(Acquired by the Hispanic Society of America)
osn

345 Los pimientos
The peppers
(Acquired by the Hispanic Society of America)

346 Excelentisimo Sefior D. Raimundo de Madrazo
Descendant and kinsman of painters, and himself
an eminent portrait-painter
347 Excelentisimo Sefior D. Alejandro Pidal y Mon
Statesman and man of letters

348 Excelentisima Sefiora de Sorolla de mantilla espafiola
Sefiora de Sorolla in Spanish mantilla

349 Mis hijas, Elena y Maria a caballo con los
trajes valencianos de 1808
My daughters, Helen and Maria on horseback in
Valencian costumes of 1808, the year of the out
break of the War for Independence against
Napoleon

350 Triste Herencia
Sad Inheritance
(See p. 20 of Introduction)

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Mis hijos, Pafio decorativo. My children, Decorative canvas
(Madrid)

Elena a los cinco meses

Ninito despues del bano
Child after his bath
(Madrid)

Elaboraci6n de pasa, Javea. Preparing raisins
(London)

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Rocas de Asturias. Rocks in Asturias. (London)
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Las Pedrizas — vistas desde el Pardo
Las Pedrizas viewed from El Pardo
(London)

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