“Sorolla gave himself with the passion of a lover to each work he painted. In his intimate letters to his wife, his beloved Clotilde, he already commented on how tears of emotion escaped him when he painted what touched his soul. This is how Blanca Pons Sorolla describes what art represented for her great-grandfather, the painter Joaquín Sorolla: a passion that made him declare himself “hungry” to work, to capture what he saw and, with rapid brushstrokes, catch the vibrations of light, an element with which he created his own style.
But in this paragraph written by the painter’s great-granddaughter, his other pillar also appears: his family. His wife, Clotilde García del Castillo, whom he married in 1888. And his three children, Joaquín, Elena and María, to whom he would be a very busy but, at the same time, devoted father. A father who would paint them from their birth, through their childhood and his youth. As Cristina Carrillo de Albornoz points out, the work and the family of Joaquín Sorolla: “They are united: they are a common thread. It is totally natural not to separate them, because he did so.
This renowned art critic is the main author of the texts of a splendid book, published by the Assouline publishing house, to commemorate the centenary of the painter’s death. Entitled Sorolla: a vision of Spain, it presents more than a hundred works, although it emphasizes the important commission he received in 1911: the decoration of the Library of the Hispanic Society, in New York, with Spain as its theme. Sorolla painted fourteen large panels, dedicated to the different regions of the country, on which she would work until practically the end.
“This is my seventh book with Assouline. The family are lovers of Spain and its traditions and I have been in love with Sorolla for many years”, explains Cristina Carrillo de Albornoz, in a telephone conversation with Magazine.
A former diplomat at the United Nations, today she works as an independent artistic curator for museums around the world. “It made perfect sense to do something in the year commemorating the centenary of Sorolla’s death. In addition, we had the support of her great-granddaughter, Blanca”. That’s how she approached it with Martine and Prosper Assouline, owners of the publishing house, and that’s how the book was devised, which was forged with care and “a lot of emotion everywhere,” says the author.
His passion for Sorolla, he recounts: “It began when I was in Madrid, taking the opposition, when I was in my early twenties. The life of the opponents is a bit hard and the few times I went out, I passed by the Sorolla Museum: entering that space, which is almost an oasis, made me feel how beautiful life is, and gave me optimism”.
In this way, she began to build a love for an artist who, even before becoming an art expert, impressed her: “Not so much yet because of the pictorial effect, but because of those emotions that one feels when in front of one of his paintings. : from the boy with the horse to those wonderful women, like his wife, whose clothes are rippling in the wind…”.
As told in the book, Joaquín Sorolla (València, 1863), was orphaned at the age of two. He and his sister Concha were welcomed by his uncles, who soon recognized that the boy was a born painter. At fourteen he entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Valencia, where he met the son of the famous photographer Antonio García Peris. That friendship was fundamental: García Peris was his first patron.
In his studio, Sorolla learned to look, developing a “photographic” pictorial style, as Cristina Carrillo de Albornoz points out. That Valencian house would also become a second home. There he also fell in love with Clotilde, the photographer’s daughter, whom he would marry at the age of twenty-five and with whom he had an exceptional relationship, as the thousands of letters that survive testify.
“Yes, Clotilde was his base and he was Clotilde’s base. Sorolla, who traveled a lot, wrote to her a lot and in one of her letters he said: ‘Paint and love you: that’s all. Does that seem little to you?’”, explains Cristina Carrillo de Albornoz. Author of almost three thousand works, Sorolla was a man obsessed with his work, who today would be described as hyperactive. But Clotilde, practical and intelligent, knew how to understand it. “Yes, he once said that painting was his rival, that Joaquín painted and painted and did not pay much attention to him, but he always said that without Clotilde’s support he would not have been able to get where he did.”
In appearance, Clotilde was “a bit fragile, thin”, but she had many resources: “She was the one who dealt with her galleries, handled the finances and managed the family economy… She was an enormous support for Sorolla and her love, with capital letters. In addition to her constant source of inspiration: she portrays her in so many ways, which is a way of expressing her admiration for her as well. Clotilde was a wife, mother and muse, ”she sums up.
Both in his early days, when he went to Madrid and Italy to train, and in the years in which he established himself as a figure of art, Sorolla traveled a lot. At first, Clotilde accompanied him but later, with three children in her care, she was more discreet on his trips. However, for the painter, the author emphasizes, his family was paramount: “He was a wonderful father. If there was a problem, he would stop painting, think about what he wanted to do most in life… When his daughter María has tuberculosis, they go to La Granja to cure her and stop painting for a while. Or when his son Joaquín studies in England and has an accident, he goes to see him immediately… Sorolla had two loves: his painting and his family”.
A painting that was his work but also his enjoyment. The figure of Sorolla, as Carrillo de Albornoz observes, is very far from that of the tormented and unbearable artist, who suffers and makes others suffer with each creation. “He was not a tormented man at all. What he did torment him, like any painter, was finding his own style. I think that search is a bit anguishing in every artist”. He was, yes, someone obsessed with painting: “He got up every day wanting to see what would emerge today, what light, what movement… It wasn’t anxiety to paint but… almost! I think he was the essential artist of the Mediterranean:.
A Mediterranean whose light would mark his work. As those children would also mark her, bathing on the shore or submerged in a transparent sea, which he portrayed with a tenderness that goes beyond the canvas. Do you think that her orphanhood influenced that sensitivity? “I do believe that there is something in Sorolla that has a connection with childhood, that he lived in a different way,” answers Cristina Carrillo de Albornoz. In part, that is why she painted her with such delicacy: “And not only his children, but also the children she saw on the beach. Indeed, there is an overflowing tenderness ”.
The light also overflows his painting. When, in 1909, the philanthropist Archer Milton Huntington, founder of the Hispanic Society of America, invited Sorolla to exhibit in New York, he caused a sensation. “Visitors lined up, generally in the snow, which went around the building… all hoping to see Sorolla’s canvases, which were brimming with life and representing intense light,” writes Carrillo de Albornoz.
A light that was understood everywhere: “Yes, it is a universal language. They are its origins. Sorolla achieved a style, which is that light that is in his paintings: imagine yourself in the winter of Manhattan and they find that exhibition… They must have been excited! ”
In fact, the enthusiasm was such that Sorolla not only sold dozens of paintings and portrayed such important figures as the President of the United States. The crowning glory came when, in 1911, Huntington commissioned him to decorate the great library of the Hispanic Society . Sorolla dedicated himself to that project, the most important of his life, with his usual passion, but the magnitude of it caused him great anxiety. “The worries and the tiredness that she had of her, in the end, caused her a stroke in 1920. It could be said that her love for perfection and painting practically cost her her life”, explains the author.
In fact, after the stroke, he was unable to paint again. Joaquín Sorolla would die in 1923, at the age of 60. Vision of Spain was inaugurated three years later. He was not there, but his work, condensed in that amazing light, remains.
How to start with Joaquín Sorolla?
Cristina Carrillo de Albornoz has no doubt: visiting her house-museum, in Madrid. “You enter there and you are in the Sorolla universe, in a privileged way”. The museum is located in the mansion where she lived with her family and where her studio was. The couple decided to bequeath both to the Spanish state. “But when he dies, Clotilde decides to be even more generous and she donates the paintings and many objects,” says Carrillo de Albornoz. The three children respected the wish of their parents. In addition to the usual collection, the museum houses a temporary exhibition entitled “Sorolla is dead! Long live Sorolla!
