Joaquín Sorolla

Private collection, UK

London, Grafton Galleries, Exhibition of Paintings by Señor Sorolla y Bastida, 1908, no. 223, illustrated in the catalogue (as The Sierra de Guadarrama)

The canvas has not been lined. Ultra-violet light reveals some scattered minor spots of cosmetic retouching primarily in the sky, and a minor band of fainter fluorescence along the upper framing edge. This painting is otherwise in good, virtually original condition, and ready to hang. Presented in the artist's original gilt frame, 'Whistler' style, with reeded ornaments. Colours: these are somewhat stronger and subtler overall in reality, notably the range of blues in the distant mountains. The catalogue illustration is somewhat more brown than the colours in reality.
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Painted in early 1907, the present work dates from Sorolla's sojourn at La Angorilla, a country house in El Pardo, north of Madrid, where his daughter María spent much of that year recovering from illness. The landscapes from this period ultimately relate to María Convalescing in El Pardo (private collection), depicting the artist's seventeen-year-old daughter wrapped in blankets before the sierra.

Pantorba references five other works of the same dimensions of the Guadarrama range (see Pantorba nos. 220-222; 1607-1608). The re-emergence of The Sierra de Guadarrama on the market, unseen in public since 1908 and unknown to Pantorba, therefore brings this total to six, five of which, including the present work, were exhibited at the exhibition of Sorolla's work at the Grafton Galleries in 1908. As the present work was apparently not shown in Sorolla's travelling exhibition in the USA in 1909, it presumably found a buyer in London in 1908.

Although arguably tighter in execution, the view in the present work relates closely to one of the versions now in the Meadows Museum, Texas (Pantorba 1607).