Boys in the Sea

The innocence of youth combined with the beauty of nature would appear in many of Joaquin Sorolla's most famous paintings. Here we find another variation on the theme of children playing in the sea, which would become a signature of the artist which helped him to build a following in both Spain and the US.

We find one young boy nearest us, with his hand protecting his eyes from the sunshine. Around a dozen other children are then playing behind him in the sea, though they are all fairly close to land and so perfectly safe. In the background we find a small slither of sky which the artist includes in order to provide a semblance of perspective, and there is also a small yacht which glides across the sea. The waves look relatively good for swimming, not to calm and not to aggressive. This type of genre was common within Sorolla's career, and he would re-use much the same palette in most of them. In this case we find the different tones of blue which provide a subtle variation across the water as it creeps over the sand in front of us. That also allows the artist to include a small reflection of the child nearest us which continues off of the bottom of the painting.

We were not able to locate a great amount of detail around this artwork, unfortunately, and this means that it is likely to reside within a private collection currently. Such items tend to be hidden away from researchers and so remain somewhat of a mystery other than the images which still remain of them. Sorolla himself worked tirelessly throughout his career, leaving behind many thousands of artworks and so there is plenty to go around the various public and private collections. Unfortunately not many of his paintings have made it into the collections of public galleries outside of the US and Spain, meaning that many residents miss out on being exposed to his work in many cases. This continues to bias his reputation and legacy towards those two countries, but hopefully in time other nations will start to pick up some of his work and help spread his reputation more internationally.

The artist was classically trained and this ensured that much of his early work was traditional in nature. He loved to produce darkly lit portraits, for example, and did so with a high level of technical proficiency. These were well received by some critics, and helped him to start to sell his work. However, he was still working in the shadow of the old masters to a certain degree and did not truly develop his own unique approach until he started to break away from that. It would be the brighter palettes that delivered the necessary change and they would come about from the natural light which saturated his home town of Valencia. Many artists have gone through a similar transition within their careers, and it is important to respect and discuss all styles in which Sorolla worked because each one was technically competent and undeniably of significant artistic merit. The darker items were inspired by some Velazquez artworks such as Las Meninas, Pope Innocent X and Coronation of the Virgin.