Paintings A–G

A title can be an invitation to look, but it cannot tell us everything about a picture. In this selection of Joaquin Sorolla’s paintings, After Bathing leads to a woman carrying a child, while After Bathing, Valencia leads to two girls changing clothes beneath white fabric. The shared words suggest a family of subjects; the images reveal different arrangements of bodies, different moments and different kinds of shelter. Looking between them is a rewarding way into this alphabetical group.

The range also brings together pictures that would rarely hang beside one another in a chronological account: a dark fishing-boat interior, an imposing portrait of Clotilde and a small study of flowering trees. Follow those contrasts as well as the familiar beach subjects. The paintings catalogue offers a wider starting point, while the works gathered here can be explored through several close comparisons.

When similar titles lead to different pictures

Begin with After Bathing, whose Spanish title is Saliendo del baño. The Museo Sorolla dates this oil painting to June–July 1915 in Valencia. A woman holds a small child and gathers white fabric around them.^[1] The action is compact: her arms make a supporting curve, the child rises above it, and the cloth lifts behind both heads. Their faces turn towards one another. This exchange establishes a centre of attention within the open, moving beach.

Across the reproduction, pink, pale blue and yellow interrupt what might at first look like a simple white garment. The large fold behind the woman is cooler than the sunlit edges above the child. A piece of the boat at the left reaches into the scene, while the shore sweeps behind the figures. These oblique forms keep the embrace from becoming a closed, isolated shape. The sea continues beyond it, and a much smaller bather gives the background a separate scale.

Now compare After Bathing, Valencia, the museum’s Después del baño, Valencia, painted in 1909.^[2] Here the figures stand separately. One girl raises her arms towards her head; the other reaches across her own body. Between these gestures, and between their long garments, small gaps become important. We see narrow passages of blue and white rather than the broad opening around the carrying pair.

The chair near the lower right makes this a place where things are put down and picked up. Its hard upright edges contrast with the long diagonal of the pink garment. Beyond the shelter, smaller figures occupy the bright beach. Look from their exposed space back into the foreground and the painting seems to contain two different conditions of visibility: people open to the sea light, and people partly screened by a fabric wall. The title gives the occasion; these spatial relationships give the picture its particular character.

The repetition of bathing titles extends into early writing about Sorolla. In Eight Essays on Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, Leonard Williams quotes Aureliano de Beruete’s description of a picture called The Bath in which one woman opens a sheet while another holds a baby. That arrangement differs from the single adult carrying the child in the 1915 painting.^[3] A familiar translated title can therefore point towards a recurring subject without identifying one composition. When moving between pictures, follow the number of figures, their gestures and the setting as carefully as the wording.

The sea as a source of livelihood

The beach group becomes richer when placed beside And They Still Say Fish are Expensive!. Painted in 1894 and now in the Prado, it shows an injured young fisherman receiving help from two older companions inside a boat. The painting won a first medal at the National Exhibition of 1895.^[4] Its title directs attention beyond the price of a catch to the human cost of obtaining it.

The fishing-boat interior changes the pace of looking. An arched interior presses over the men, and their bent bodies concentrate the action low in the canvas. The young man’s extended arm reaches towards the bottom edge. A dark hat interrupts the pale clothing of the figure on the left, and the three heads form an uneven descending sequence. The surrounding equipment gives the bodies little empty space in which to move.

Yet light remains a means of directing attention. Pale cloth, exposed skin and small metallic reflections emerge from the brown enclosure at different strengths. The left side feels sharply interrupted by timber and hanging objects, while curved surfaces behind the men draw the eye deeper into the boat. It takes time to untangle this space. That slower reading suits the concentrated gestures of assistance.

Set this image beside the carrying pair in After Bathing. In each, one body depends on another’s support, and a hand is more than a small descriptive detail: it explains how the figures are connected. The settings change the meaning of that connection. The fishing picture encloses assistance within a shared working environment; the beach picture opens it against surf and sky. Comparing the two gives a more precise account of Sorolla’s range than dividing his pictures simply into dark early works and bright later ones. Similar visual problems can recur within very different subjects.

Clotilde and the distribution of attention

A family name supplies another kind of connection across the catalogue. Clotilde with Hat is the Museo Sorolla’s 1910 portrait, Clotilde con sombrero. It is a tall oil painting, 123 centimetres high and 81 centimetres wide.^[5] The broad hat occupies the upper part of the tall format, which continues down through the seated figure to the joined hands.

The brim is almost a second horizontal frame around the face. Above it, pale feathers sweep outwards; beneath it, the face emerges from a dark surround. The strongest lights are separated by extensive shadow, so the eye travels between them rather than surveying every part of the costume equally. In the small reproduction, some boundaries of the black clothing nearly disappear into the background. The portrait asks us to distinguish slight changes within darkness.

This makes a useful counterpoint to the white fabric of the bathing scenes. There, a light surface is broken into cool and warm passages; here, dark surfaces are interrupted by selected lights. Try looking at each picture from far enough away that details become indistinct. The beach figures remain bound together by broad pale shapes. Clotilde’s face and the sweep of the hat become the portrait’s principal signals, with the hands providing a quieter point below.

The comparison also changes how we read a title. Clotilde with Hat identifies a person and a conspicuous accessory, but the accessory does more than describe dress. Its width gives the upper body an expanded silhouette, while its shadow makes the face a more concentrated area. A named sitter can be approached through the same practical questions as an unnamed beach figure: where does the light fall, how does a gesture connect one part of the image to another, and what does the surrounding space allow us to see?

A landscape small enough to change the pace

The Almond Trees in Assisi offer a different scale of encounter. The Museo Sorolla classifies this work as a colour note, painted in oil on canvas attached to cardboard. Measuring only 12.5 by 23.3 centimetres, it dates from spring within the years 1887–1889.^[6] A screen-sized reproduction can make such a work appear comparable in scale to a large portrait. Remembering its actual size restores something of the difference between them.

The landscape spreads sideways. Thin branches break against a pale sky, while the blossom gathers into irregular patches rather than an even canopy. Below, warmer earth colours meet a dark belt of vegetation. A distant ridge at the right falls away from the nearer trees. The eye has no face or central gesture to settle upon; it moves among branches, gaps and areas of contrasting colour.

Compare that branching pattern with the feathers in Clotilde’s hat. Both interrupt a surrounding field with fine, radiating marks, but their functions differ. The feathers enlarge a single figure’s silhouette. The trees divide a stretch of landscape and let the sky enter through it. This is a small visual connection that an alphabetical selection makes possible without suggesting that the works were conceived together.

Such comparisons are useful throughout A–G. Begin with the subject named by a title, then notice the form that makes this particular picture memorable: an enclosing hull, an open sheet, a wide brim or a web of branches. Dates and original titles help distinguish objects; sustained looking reveals why similarly named pictures deserve separate attention. The H–S and T–Z selections offer further encounters, but this group already provides several paths between Sorolla’s figures, working spaces and landscapes.