Covachuelas, Toledo

A wide river sweeps past as we look across from a bank on the near side. Across we spot some elaborate architecture which juts out from a sprawling cityscape. In front of that is a series of bushes and rocks which lead down to the water.

Artist Sorolla brings a good variety of colour into this painting. He would title it Covachuelas, Toledo which is simply the location in which he created it. The brushwork is loose and expressive, there is no real attempt to produce photo-realistic imagery, even though we know he was capable of working within that way. He wants instead to leave behind his impression of the view, appending his own emotion of feelings from the day itself. Spain would take inspiration from the French Impressionists and a number of its artists would work in a similar manner, with Sorolla being the most famous of those. He loved to enjoy the outdoors of his native country and would regularly travel around in order to discover new locations all the time. They would provide a large body of work spanning right across his career.

Spain is a country which possesses some stunning architecture in a wide variety of styles, and the artist would enjoy capturing it within his work. He became skilled at recreating these different structures within his work, though normally they would be a part of an overall composition, just as we find here with Covachuelas, Toledo. Architectural art is a specialist genre which can take some time to master, with an accurate perspective being the biggest challenge for most. Sorolla mastered it without fuss and it allowed him a greater variety within his already extensive oeuvre.

The Pink Robe, After Bathing and Beach at Valencia would be some of the finest artworks created by this famous painter. He achieved success through hard work and in how he perfected his approach over time. His command of light and colour would be the most impressive element of his career and this ensures that his work feels fairly contemporary even today. He also played an important role in spreading the Impressionist approach across Spain, once people saw how it could be applied successfully to this country and ported over from France where it had already proven so successful. The same transition would happen in other countries as well, and eventually it would become a truly international movement which continued the development towards the modern styles that we see so much of today.