Focus on this artwork and explore the Sorolla's beach paintings.
Born in Valencia, Joaquín Sorolla had been familiar since his youth with life on the sea. In his early work, there is the traditional port view Marina, Barcos en el Puerto with which he made his debut in the art exhibition Expsoición National in Madrid in 1881. In the 1890s he repeatedly returned to the subject of fishermen from Valencia. In some very large paintings, he showed fishermen bringing their catch ashore or pulling their boat onto the beach with oxen. He also portrayed boatbuilders or fishwives, not a glamorous life of leisure activities, but working people at sea. For this work, he received very positive reviews and was awarded prizes. In addition, these works brought international success. The French government bought the painting La Vuelta de la presence from 1895 and the Berlin National Gallery acquired Pescadores Valencianos of 1895.
In 1900 Sorolla began to paint children bathing. In the 1904 painting La hora del baño Sorolla linked fishing and bathing children and portrayed naked children swimming between a fishing boat and an ox standing in the water. In the foreground one of the children comes from the sea and is awaited by a young woman who stretches out a white cloth to dry the wet child. Already this picture anticipates Sorolla's themes in Walk on the Beach. So the white fabric plays a central role: The movement of the cloth in the wind is already the main subject, the shore area between the water and beach has no clear contours and the whole picture is bathed in the light of early evening.That same summer Sorolla portrayed his wife Clotilde at Valencia. In Clotilde en la playa the wife sits on a stool near the sea in a white dress. Here as in the later Walk on the Beach, the parasol is already an important prop. The open parasol casts shadows on her face, which is hidden by a veil in the later image. In this picture the painter has taken a slightly elevated position, so that no background horizon line is visible. Instead of the beach in the foreground it goes directly into the waves of the sea, with no sky to be seen.
In 1906, Sorolla and his family visited Biarritz in northern Spain (Note: Biarritz is in France). In the group portrait Paseo de Faro several women walk along the cliffs above the beach. The painter shows here the beach and washed around by underwater rock formation as a background motive. In front of the frieze-like image the women are loosely arranged side by side. Again, white clothing dominates the scene, and only the young girl in the center stands out in a bright red jacket. Large hats and parasols are important props in this image also.
In 1909 he returned to the beach in Valencia and again took up themes depicting people at sea. In the portrait Elena en la playa Sorolla portrayed his youngest daughter in a white dress with the beach as a background. In this portrait, from about the same time as Walk on the Beach, Sorolla painted the meeting of land and sea, the waves of the sea, the dress moving in the wind, a hat and the light of a summer day in the Mediterranean.
Berlin National Gallery Biarritz Joaquín Sorolla Valencia Madrid