"Sorolla and the Sea" | Exhibition Insights

Hi, I'm Guillaume Quince, I'm the Director and CEO of the Hispanic Society Museum and Library and the happy curator of this beautiful exhibition here at the Northern Museum of Art, Sorolla and the Sea. The Hispanic Society Museum and Library has the most important collection of works by Sorolla outside of Spain. It all started in 1909 when our founder, Archer Huntington, decided to organize the first retrospective in the U.S. dedicated to Sorolla. Sorolla was very little known, but that exhibition was a blast. It lasted one month, and in one month 160,000 visitors came to our museum in New York and Manhattan and queued for hours and hours to get to see the show. A bit more than a century after that, here again we are promoting Sorolla and helping American audiences to discover the amazing talent of this artist and welcome Sorolla in the U.S. for the first time. This exhibition is organized in five sections. Visitors will first be welcomed and introduced to Sorolla, his family, his friends, his life, his work. And then we'll take a deep dive into the topic of the show, the sea, and welcome this amazing painting, gigantic painting, that is behind me, Beaching the Boat. What's truly amazing with this painting, Beaching the Boat, is not only the dimension, but the fact that such a big painting is dedicated to featuring the life of the hard-working class. Usually those large paintings were all about celebrating and promoting the kings, big battles, victories, the life of the wealthy and all that. But now here it's about people of modest background that are working very hard in the sea to actually bring fishes to feed the population, so critical to the survival of society for today's life. What's very interesting is that Sorolla painted them just like they were heroes. Heroes of daily life, heroes that have been forgotten. They're heroes because their poses come from classical antiquity. He's clearly having some heroic statues in mind when he paints that. And he sees that beauty, he sees that heroism in this daily life. So it's really an homage to the force, the strength, the passion, the talent also of those people working very hard. And in this gallery with Beaching the Boat that is dedicated to the life of the fishermen and the family, you can see little sketches that are actually about their lives. Whether it is a painterly rehearsal for Beaching the Boat, or you have two fishermen taking a break and having lunch in one of the boats, or the wives of the fishermen waiting on the shore and helping out carrying the fishes to the fish market. All these very, very tiny sketches that show fishermen and their family on a lunch break in their boat using the sail to protect themselves against the sun. Visitors will be invited to explore different facets, different aspects of the sea. Whether it is the scene of the life of the fishermen and their family, whether it is a place of recreation for people coming from different classes of society and mingling together in this democratic stage that's the beach and the sea. Sorolla had a very, very specific approach. He would paint in plein air, meaning that he would paint outside. He would just have his easel on the beach and look at what was happening around, whether movement of the sea itself, or family enjoying themselves, or sunbathing, and he would capture all those moments. Very often he would use a camera to just memorialize those different moments, those different motifs, those different patterns, and rework them in the studio afterward. So in our society, in our time, where we are doing snapshots all the time, I think visitors will respond to Sorolla's eyes, to Sorolla's approach that is very photographic, and I think the paintings show that quite eloquently. In most of Sorolla's paintings you'll find figures, you'll find characters, protagonists, although in our collection and in this show we have two amazing landscapes. One is a seascape and the other one is a view of a garden that has no figures at all. So it's quite unusual, it almost feels like the scene has been vacated and we are waiting for the figures to come back. And very interestingly, next to the seascape in Javea, we have this sketch from a private collection that shows a bunch of kids enjoying themselves in a very similar landscape. So it's like suddenly life has come back to the sea. There is a painting that I like exploring. This very crowded beach, a mother or the toddler stepping in the sea for the first time. He feels very shy or they feel very shy. All the kids are looking at the scene, the wives, the fishermen, the two boats that are coming back. All those elements can be seen in other works by Sorolla, but you have them all condensed together and that's kind of a great summary of his, almost a catalogue of his art. Sorolla is a very, very engaging artist and I would be in a tough spot if I had to choose one specific painting. But the one I enjoy possibly the most is the portrait of his friend and fellow artist Tiffany. It is a beautiful portrait, one of his most famous works. It is set in Long Island on the property of Tiffany and is surrounded by those colourful flowers and you can see the bag in the background. And don't miss the dog, Fanny was the name of the dog that is featured by Sorolla here. It really conveys friendship, joy of life, optimism, truly. And in those difficult times, I think this is really something that could use more optimism and I think that visitors will exit the exhibition transformed and in a very, very good mood. And finally, the last section is transporting visitors up to New York City. In New York City, in our museum, we have a very, very large gallery that's called the Sorolla Gallery that is made of 14 gigantic canvases featuring the different regions of Spain. We call that work the Vision of Spain. This is the last major commission that Sorolla ever did and although those large paintings cannot be travelled, we have high-format gouaches that actually can be travelled and will be shown here in this exhibition. So visitors will get a sense of this immersive experience that Vision of Spain is and of course, Spain is surrounded by different seas and oceans and all those are very prominent characters in those gouaches. This very large commission, Vision of Spain, pays homage to the diversity in Spain, cultural diversity, racial diversity, diversity of ages and traditions and backgrounds, all that is captured in this magnificent gallery. And those gouaches are just like his brain opening up because you see his hesitation, his inspiration. He would paint something, cut it, paste it, repaint it and creating this patchwork that is actually incredibly spontaneous and you almost can feel like you were in the studio with the artist. And in fact, in that very gallery, we have placed the palette of Sorolla with a lot of paint actually that is still dried on it. So you really think like you have stepped in the studio and Sorolla could just show up any minute. Visitors will see in this exhibition a very large variety, variety of topics, variety of people, variety of size, tiny paintings that were made on the spot, on the beach and with a few touches, Sorolla managed to recreate an entire universe or gigantic works that Sorolla was very famous for. And I think, I really hope that visitors will pick what they like best and will identify, will relate.