JOAQUÍN SOROLLA | La fuente de Los Caballos, La Granja (The Horses Fountain, La Granja)

Mrs W. A. Pock (purchased at the 1909 Boston exhibition)
Private collection, Mexico (purchased in Madrid in 1977)
Purchased from the above by the present owner in the late 1980s

London, Grafton Galleries, Exhibition of Paintings by Señor Sorolla y Bastida, 1908
New York, The Hispanic Society of America, no. 60; Buffalo; Boston; Paintings by Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida Exhibited by the Hispanic Society of America, 1909, no. 41
Mexico City, Museo Nacional de San Carlos, Sorolla, el pintor de la luz, 1993, no. 31, illustrated in the catalogue  

Thomas R. Ibarra, The American Success of a Great Spanish Painter, New York, 1909, p. II566, illustrated (as Fountain of the Horses. La Granja)
Brinton and W.E.B. Sterkweather, Eight Essays on Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, New York, 1909, vol. I, p. 209, no. 60, illustrated 
Bernardino de Pantorba, La Vida y la Obra de Joaquín Sorolla, Madrid, 1970, p. 191, no. 1629
Sorolla and America, exh. cat., Dallas - San Diego, 2013, p. 231, fig. 102 (illustrated in a black and white photograph of the 1909 exhibition at The Hispanic Society of America, New York), p.  302, n. 20, illustrated
Sorolla y Estados Unidos, exh.cat. Madrid, Fundación Mapfre, 2014, p. 349

The canvas has not been lined and has been securely attached to a keyed wooden stretcher. Some faint lines of craquelure are visible in the upper half of the composition. However, these are not distracting and appear to be stable. A small white area of abrasion is visible in the water in the upper right quadrant (as see in the catalogue illustration). Inspection under ultra-violet light reveals some minor, isolated retouchings, including: - spots of retouching within and around the aforementioned abrasion; - a circa 5cm vertical stroke in the upper right corner, addressing a line of craquelure (also patched on the reverse); - some strokes in the water in the lower left corner, some of which possibly addressing an x-shaped tear (also patched on the reverse); - two minor strokes in the water in the centre right of the composition, possibly addressing old flaking; - one small spot in the shell-shaped fountain towards the centre of the composition (also patched on the reverse); and - one small spot in the lower right corner closer to the signature (also patched on the reverse). It should be noted that most of the aforementioned retouchings have been carefully applied, are not visually distracting, and are only visible upon close inspection. This work presents very well and is overall in good condition. Presented in a dark, wooden frame with a beige inner slip and a nameplate.
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In the summer of 1907 Sorolla and his family moved to La Granja de San Ildefonso in Segovia, to the north of Madrid, prompted by a commission to paint the portraits of the Spanish royal family at the royal palace of La Granja, and by the drier climate to help his daughter María convalesce from the tuberculosis she had contracted a year earlier. Buoyed by the recent success of his one-man show at the Galerie Georges Petit in Paris in 1906, and just after his solo exhibition at the Schulte Gallery in Berlin, Düsseldorf and Cologne, Sorolla painted a total of twenty-seven pictures in the gardens of the royal residence during the summer of 1907, among them both formal portraits of members of the royal family, and less formal ones of his wife Clotilde and his daughter María promenading in the gardens (fig. 2). This series of paintings would mark the beginning of Sorolla's love for gardens, a subject matter which would play a key role in his oeuvre. The Palacio Real de La Granja de San Ildefonso, known as La Granja, became the summer residence of the Kings of Spain from the 1720s during the reign of Philip V. The palace is in a restrained Baroque style, surrounded by extensive gardens in the formal Jardin à la française style with twenty-six sculptural fountains. All of the fountains represent themes from classical mythology, including Greek deities, allegories and scenes from myths. For Sorolla, the play of light on the scintillating surfaces of the fountain pools provided an abundance of subjects, which he captured as luminous impressions like the present one. Others in the series of fountain pictures include Fuente de Neptuno and Fuente de la Selva.




We are grateful to Blanca Pons-Sorolla for her assistance in cataloguing this work, which will be included in her forthcoming Sorolla catalogue raisonné (BPS 1575).