Church Roncal Stairs

Church Roncal Stairs is a delightful cityscape painting by Spanish painter Joaquin Sorolla. We do know that the artist produced a number of similar pieces in the early 1910s, but the date of this piece is unknown.

The piece is known in its original Spanish title as Escalera de la Iglesia del Roncal and what evidence we could find on it points to 1912 as the most likeliest of creation dates. Sorolla was able to master several different genres within his career and would sometimes combine them together within the same composition. In this case he focuses on architectural features of a church. He would regularly move around the country looking for new inspiration for his work and found that Spanish architecture could often complement his own artistic style. He would appreciate the warm tones of the brick work, for example. The bright light that engulfed the Spanish region, just as it continues to do today, would also encourage the artist to develop a bold palette.

We initially see the steps leading upwards in the bottom half of the work. There is then an archway which leads through to the back go the church, as well as a thick supporting structure that lines the left hand side. Sorolla uses a large number of variations of his main colours in order to create a truly lifelike finish, with the steps having touches of yellow, orange and purple to allow us to understand the stone from which they were made. One can imagine the roughness of their surface. It would be this precision which gained the artist academic respect, but sometimes he would reduce levels of detail in order to provide a more impressionistic look instead.

Artist Sorolla is known by many as one of the finest Spanish painters of all time, with his reputation being strongest within the US and his native Spain. He received good amounts of financial support within the US where the topics of his work seemed particularly popular. There was also a strong Impressionist group within the US as well, so locals were entirely comfortable with his artistic approach. It shows the power of art that new ideas can spread so quickly across the world once that have settled first of all. The French painters took time to achieve respect within Paris but once their popularity started to rise, so it would spread abroad, with actually some Americans already being involved in the early exhibitions in Paris.