JOAQUÍN SOROLLA | PLAYA DE VALENCIA

Esperanza Conill de Zanetti (acquired directly from the artist)

Sale: Christie's, New York, October 31, 1980, lot 124, illustrated

Private Collection, New York

Private Collection (acquired in Spain circa 1985)

Thence by descent 

Aureliano de Beruete et al, Eight Essays on Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, New York, 1909, vol. II, no. 175

London, Grafton Galleries, Exhibition of Paintings by Señor Sorolla y Bastida, 1908 (sent but possibly not exhibited)

New York, The Hispanic Society of America, Paintings by Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida Exhibited by the Hispanic Society of America, February 8-March 8, 1909, no. 175

With expressive brushwork and vibrant color, Joaquín Sorolla captures a crowd of tanned, costumed bathers splashing in the surf of the Playa de Valencia. Painted circa 1900, this lively sketch was one of many that travelled first to exhibition in London in 1908 and then to New York in 1909, which also marked the artist’s first trip to the United States. This highly productive visit inspired Sorolla to take new approaches to portraiture. As he wrote to his American patron Archer M. Huntington, "I am starting to notice that portraits can also be art... I am finishing the portrait... [of] the beautiful Spanish (Cuban) Mrs. Zanetti, half dressed, Goyaesque and exciting (as quoted in Sorolla y la Hispanic Society, Una visión de la España de entresiglos, exh. cat., Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, 1998-1999, p. 380). Sorolla gave the present work to Zanetti as another special memento of their meeting. Married to a professor at Columbia University, Esperanza also modelled for Sorolla's friend John Singer Sargent in the 1920s.