Joaquín Sorolla and the Sea – Part II

My last blog post was on Joaquín Sorolla's approach to plein air painting, after I saw the CaixaForum exhibition, "The Colour of the Sea" in Palma de Mallorca. His "Colour Notes" are so fresh and searching, so bold and gestural, that I sometimes felt that the resultant paintings, in which this carefully observed material was incorporated, lost a little in impact. Nonetheless, the exhibition shows beautifully how Sorolla, set up on the beach in very practical painting fashion, was ever-intent on capturing the endless changes of the seascapes. His meticulous studies of the different hues of blue, for instance, show his passion for capturing the limpid colours of the sea, the play of light on the waves or on bodies in the water, their diversity of tone. Yes, he was basing all his art on Nature, in a realistic fashion, but he certainly was breaking down what he saw into the most abstract of shapes and compositions.

Young Yachtsman, 1909, oil on canvas, oil on canvas, Joaquín Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Sea and Rocks, Javea, 1900, oil on canvas, oil on canvas, Joaquín Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

The Sea, (Javea), 1905, oil on cardboard, Joaquín sorolla, (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Look, for instance, at the Young Swimmers. Their skin underwater becomes a shimmer of alabasters floating in this energy-filled abstraction of green ripples and dancing light.

Swimmers (Javea), oil on canvas, 1905, Joaquín Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Another canvas that interested me in the flattening of the perspective is Marie at the Beach. As in other paintings he did of contrejour light on cliff tops, Sorolla flattened out the distances: the sea below is virtually on the same plane as Maria, because one senses his total fascination with the sea and its restless play of light and foam.

Marie on the Beach, (Biarritz), 1906, oil on canvas, Swimmers (Javea), oil on canvas, 1905, Joaquín Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

The translucence of white fabric, seen contrajour against the sea, is another of his favourite subjects. Just out of the Sea demonstrates this marvellously; it is all about that luminous, undulating light blowing in the wind, contrasting with the glowing solidity of the mother and small boy, all rendered tangy in the salt air and the susurration of the turquoise sea.

Just out of the Sea, 1915, oil on canvas, Joaquín Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

The marine landscapes are all about luminosity, distance being dissolved into pure colour. Sky and sea are his fascinations, his challenges.  No wonder he stated, ""I could not paint at all if I had to paint slowly. Every effect is so transient, it must be rapidly painted.”

Mar de Zarauz, 1910, oil on canvas, Joaquín Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Breakwater, San Sebastian, oil on canvas, Joaquín Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

His 1919 works done at Cabo San Vincente in Mallorca are pure colour hymns. No wonder he is loved by so many for these celebrations of the sea, one of Spain's greatest beauties in his lifetime.  We are lucky that he recorded his country's coastal scenes before they were transformed by 20th-century mass tourism.

Cabo San Vicente, Mallorca, 1919, oil on canvas, Joaquín Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Esmeraldas de la Cala San Vicente, 1919, oil on canvas, Joaquín Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Una Barca en la Cala de San Vicente, 1919, oil on canvas, Joaquín Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Helena en Cala San Vicente, 1919, oil on canvas, Joaquín Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Joaquín Sorolla and the Sea - Part I

An exhibition, "Sorolla: The Colour of the Sea" has just come to Palma de Mallorca via the CaixaForum, having travelled to various cities in Spain in larger or smaller version. The paintings and oil on board studies have been lent by the Sorolla Museum in Madrid. They reflect Joaquín Sorolla's passion for the sea, despite the fact he was not born at the coast. They also testify to his enormous skill in working en plein air, at great speed, trying to be faithful to the every-changing light, the restless sea in all its moods and the feel of the place in which he was painting.

Rocas de San Esteban, Asturias, 1903, oil on canvas, Joaquí Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Sorolla commented, "Me sería imposible pintar despacio al aire libre. No hay nada inmóvil en lo que nos rodea. El mar se riza a cada instante, la nube se deforma, al mudar de sitio – pero aunque todo estuviera petrificado y fijo, bastaría que se moviera el sol, lo que hace de continuo para dar diverso aspecto a las cosas. Hay que pintar de prisa porque cuanto se pierde, fugaz que no vuelve a encontrarse!”. Roughly translated, Sorolla said that it was impossible for him to paint slowly en plein air. Nothing stays still around us. The sea ripples continuously, clouds change their form as they move, and even if everything were totally still, even cast in stone, everything would still change in aspect because the sun moves all the time. You have to paint quickly because so much gets lost, some much is fleeting and will never return.

Any artist who has worked outdoors knows exactly what Sorolla was talking about.

Sea at Ibiza (study for Smugglers), 1919, oil on canvas, Joaquín orolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

The exhibition showed a fair number of oil on cardboard, small studies, "Colour Notes", and for me, they were the most fascinating aspects of seeing the show. In this first blog entry on Sorolla, I will concentrate on them, as far as I am able to find decent images. First of all, you see Sorolla responding to Nature's colours and forms and seeking the fleeting approximation of the colours and light that he saw. These small rectangles of colour impressions are so abstract it is amazing, even though Sorolla was a passionate Realist.

Study of Waves, oil, Joaquí Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Study of Storm-tossed Sea, oil, Joaquí Sorolla (image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Study - Storm at Sea, oil, Joaquí Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Study - Storm at Sea, oil, Joaquí Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Beach Study, Joaquí Sorolla, oil (image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Javea Beach, oil, Joaquí Sorolla, (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Since the sea is endlessly in motion, it is astonishing how Sorolla captures its moods and movement, particularly considering that he did not spend all his time at the coast. His early visits to the brilliantly-lit Mediterranean areas near Javea and Valencia were later contrasted with visits to the north at San Sebastian and Biarritz, with very different atmospheric and marine conditions.

Javea, oil, Joaquí Sorolla, (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Javea, Study, oil, Joaquí Sorolla (image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Sea Study, oil, Joaquí Sorolla, (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Sea Study, oil, Joaquí Sorolla, (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Isorllla Sea Study, oil, Joaquí Sorolla, (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Wave Study, oil, Joaquí Sorolla, (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Northern Seascape, oil, Joaquí Sorolla (image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Beach Study, oil, Joaquí Sorolla (image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

The studies and paintings of the sea are, to me, the most wonderful part of Sorolla's opus.  For him, of course, these studies were  the preparation for the larger finished paintings. He knew that understanding a scene, preparation and prior choice of colours all helped when it came to working on a bigger canvas.  He remarked, "The great difficulty with large canvases is that they should by right be painted as fast as a sketch. By speed only can you gain an appearance of fleeting effect. But to paint a three yard canvas with the same dispatch as one of ten inches is well-nigh impossible.”

Nonetheless,  Sorolla also knew that once he got going, all bets were off on how the painting would evolve, because the light, scene, sea, would be continually changing.  He advised, “Go to nature with no parti pris. You should not know what your picture is to look like until it is done. Just see the picture that is coming."

For him, as for every artist, especially one working en plein air, every work was a gamble. In his case, however, his gambles paid off handsomely most of the time.

Almond Blossom - a Joy for Artists

January and February in Mallorca, Spain, are months of delight for those of us who love almond blossom.  The island is transformed into fairyland, with row upon row of pink and white blossom undulating through the valleys and over the plains, always with the backdrop of dramatic blue-green mountains and azure winter skies.  Beneath the trees lie carpets of emerald winter wheat sprouting or grazing land that is dotted with huge herds of shaggy sheep, often with early fragile lambs.  The incredible winter light playing over the blossom is crystalline and renders every detail vivid and gem like.

Spring in the Almond Groves of Mallorca

Almond Blossom, Mallorca

Almond blossom not only plays an important role in ensuring the production of almonds, always an important crop, and a major tourist attraction in Mallorca; it has also inspired many artists. Perhaps the most famous among these artists were those of the 19th and early 20th century, many of them from Catalonia, who visited the island and were captivated by the island landscapes and. above all, the light here.  Even Joaquin Sorolla exclaimed, "This light, this light, it is impossible to capture it!" ("Esa luz, esa luz, es impossible capturarla!").

One of the most famous of the Catalan painters who became one of Mallorca's leading landscape painters was Santiago Rusiñol i Prat.  He was also a noted writer, poet and playwright. Born in 1861, he came first to Palma in 1893.  After spending time in Paris, he returned to Mallorca in 1901, partly to get over a drug addiction.   From then on, he spent  a great deal of time on the island, celebrating its scenery, gardens and flowers.  In 1912, he also published La Isla de la Calma, a paen to the Island of Calm, Mallorca, that he believed was a bulwark against the increasingly frenetic industrial and materialistic world elsewhere.

Santiago Rusiñol. White Farmhouse (Bunyola, Mallorca), 1902

Terraced Garden in Mallorca, Santiago Rusiñol, 1904

Terraced Garden in Mallorca, Santiago Rusiñol, 1911

Santiago Rusiñol, Almendros en Flor, c. 1900

Santiago Rusiñol, Almendros en Flor

Santiago Rusiñol was often accompanied by artist friends during his stays in Mallorca.  Joaquin Mir (1873-1940) was one of his companions, and lived for four years in Mallorca from 1901 onwards, often in the north of the island around Pollensa.. He became known as the father of Mallorcan impressionism, having evolved from an early much more personal approach to painting, when he merged form and colour.  Mir too fell under the spell of the springtime almond blossom around the island.

His early paintings of spring differ greatly from his later work, but all sing of Mallorca's light and extraordinary beauty that comes in January and February.

Spring, Joaquin Mir, 1910, Image courtesy of  Fundacion Banco Santander)

View of L’Aleixar, (c. 1915-1919), Joaquin Mir,  (Image courtesy of Bilbao Fine Arts Museum)

Almendros Floridos, Joaquin Mir, (Image courtesy of The Athenaeum)

Spring, Joaquin Mir

Another of Santiago Rusiñol's friends in Paris and Barcelona was Eliseu Meifrèn i Roig, (1857-1940), a Catalan who travelled widely and was highly respected for his plein air approach to landscapes.  He too came to Mallorca as the new century dawned; ultimately he became director of the Art School in Palma in 1910.  His paintings of almond blossom are lyrical.

Almendros en Flor, Mallorca, Eliseo Meifrén

Eliseo Meifrén taught another Palma-born artist who became very well known for his paintings of Mallorca, Joan Fuster Bonnin (1870-1943).  Talented and prolific, he was friendly with Santiago Rusiñol and Mir, and later, with another very successful artist in Mallorca, Anglada Camarasa.

Mallorcan Landscape (near Palma), Joan Fuster Bonnin

Almonds in Flower, Hermen Anglada Camarasa

How many paintings can one appreciate of almond blossom?  I don't know, but I do know that the late 19th and early 20th century saw an amazing number of artists tackling paintings of these almond trees in flower.  Incidentally, these blossoms are rather short-lived, for winter winds and rain play havoc with them, and within the space of a week, the tender brilliantly green pointed little leaves begin to replace the pink or white blooms.

Another four examples of artists who loved Mallorca in January and February. Take your pick!

Almonds in Flower, Pilar Muntaner (1878-1961)

Can Binimelis, Antonio Gelabert Massott (1877-1982)

Untitled, 1951, Dionis Bennassar, (1904-1967)

February in Mallorca, Joan Borras (1926-1983)

Perhaps the suitable footnote to all the artists' paintings of Mallorca's almonds and the light in which they sparkle is to add the fact that almonds are the earliest domesticated tree nuts, originating in the Levant and spreading through the Mediterranean basin. It is thought that almond trees were first introduced to Mallorca during the Roman times, after Quinto Cecilio Metelo conquered the Balearic Islands in 123 BC.  When grapes were so badly affected by phylloxera towards the end of the 19th century, the Mallorcans planted almonds as a replacement crop. Thus the Catalan and Mallorcan artists had such wonderful panoramas of almond trees in flowers to delight and inspire them.

Sunlight and Shadows

Today is a day of heavy flat light, laden with humidity and heat, here on the Georgia coast. All contours are softened, distances are blurred and somehow the scene is flat and almost featureless. It is a day that makes me long for the bright sharp sunlight of the Mediterranean. It also makes me realise how much landscape artists are influenced by the ambient light.

Think, for instance, of Japanese artists. Down the ages, in their nature-based art, the Japanese have been very aware of the play of light on rocks, trees, architecture. Shadows, the corollary of sunlight, are a natural function of their architecture, for example, with the broad eaves on buildings casting wonderful angled shadows. The ultimate interpretation of the beauty of light can be seen in their black lacquer ware, flecked with gold or silver. Viewed by lantern or candlelight, this lacquer ware evokes their northern, sea-influenced light in haunting fashion.

At the other extreme are Western artists who work in the brilliance of Mediterranean light. Take, for example, two of Spain's artists, Joaquin Sorolla from Valencia and Joaquin Mir from Barcelona. Sorolla was multi-faceted in his art, ranging from wonderful luminous portraits to vast historical paintings and, my favourites, landscapes flooded with light. In fact, a quote by Edmund Peel from James Gibbons Huneker, in the book, The Painter, Joaquin Sorolla, says it all: "Sorolla – the painter of vibrating sunshine without equal". It is interesting to study Sorolla's paintings: many of his landscapes which include figures have dramatically bold, abstract shadows (such as his paintings of Valencian fisher women). Yet landscapes done in Javea, Valencia or Malaga, in mainland Spain's Mediterranean coast, are often painted in a very narrow range of values, without dramatic shadows. Even more deliriously high key are some of his depictions of the almost incandescent cliffs and headlands in Mallorca, especially the sun-drenched scenes of Cala San Vicente in the north-east of the island.

"El mar en Mallorca" , Joaquin Sorolla

Interestingly, Mallorca, with its amazing light, was also the springboard for Joaquin Mir's greatest successes. A contemporary of Sorolla (who lived from 1863-1923), Mir was born in Barcelona in 1873 and lived until 1940. Colour and light were the keys to his art : "All I want is for my works to lighten the heart and flood the eyes and the soul with light", he said in 1928. He forged his own path to celebrating the Mediterranean sunlight and shadows, sometimes veering to realism, other times towards abstraction, but always seeking to interpret the beauty he saw in a delirium of colour and light. He borrowed the Impressionists' palette of colours, eschewing black, but he used the colours in his own highly original fashion. When you see Mir's works done in Mallorca, you can feel the wonderfully clear light pulsating over everything - the Es Baluard Museum has a number of these canvases (http://www.esbaluard.org).

Joaquim Mir i Trinxet (or Joaquin Mir, 1873-1940): Canyelles

Perhaps evoking the clarity of Mediterranean light will help banish the Georgian grey skies of humid heat – I can but hope!

Perfumes, sound and light

I have just spent time in my other home in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. There, it is a green and beautiful spring after bountiful rains this year, and the island is celebrating with exuberant growth on mountain slopes and down stony valleys.

I had some time to paint and draw, and once again, my sense of place was expanded and extended. I know that wherever one is working outdoors as an artist, you become conscious of all your surroundings. It seemed to be especially the case this spring in Spain: the perfume of orange blossom, lemon blossom, jasmine and roses floated everywhere on the air.

Citrus sinensis Osbeck painting by Mary E. Eaton from a 1917 issue of National Geographic

As the sun warmed, each morning, and the sky became brilliant, the perfumes intensified and became intoxicating. The light grew more brilliant - oh, that Mediterranean light! And as I sat quietly, totally enraptured with all this light and drunk on these exquisite perfumes, I was serenaded by blackbirds singing their wondrous melodies, or tiny serins buzzing excitedly high in the trees above.

I was soothed and inspired. As the light changed and the flowers I was depicting opened, moved and faded, I was enveloped in this world in which I was sitting. I felt a bond and a sense of kinship with all the wonderful artists who have worked in the Mediterranean region down the ages - Italian masters like Botticelli or Guercino, Corot, Monet, Renoir, Matisse, Cezanne or Raoul Dufy in France, even Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, just to name one Spanish artist who celebrated so superbly the brilliant light of Spain (go to this site if you speak Spanish or this one for English). They all responded to the same light, perfumes and sounds. From the flowers painted on the walls of ancient Egyptian tombs to the frescoes on walls of opulent homes in Pompeii, artists have always gloried in the beauties of flowers growing in the Mediterranean world. I felt it was a great privilege to be immersed in this world of brilliant light, intoxicating perfume and liquid bird song, as I celebrated Mallorca's spring flowers in silverpoint and watercolour.