The most successful painter around 1900

The Valencia-born painter Joaquín Sorolla (1863-1923) recorded an extraordinary artistic career that the world had never seen before. The Impressionist knew how to stage the light as skillfully as almost no other. Even Claude Monet was deeply impressed. In Paris, London and New York, among others, gigantic individual exhibitions were held in his honor, some with 450 exhibits − at that time Sorolla was just in his 40s and far from the end of his career. He won numerous gold and honorary medals in Europe and the USA, more than any painter before. In New York, Sorolla was commissioned to paint the monumental mural cycle Visión de España, which he completed in 1919 for the Hispanic Society of America. His fee was $150,000 (about 2.4 million today) − an unimaginable sum for an artist at the time.

The painter not only knew how to capture light on canvas, but he also had an eye for taboos. His painting Sad Inheritance! shows physically disabled children living in a hospital taking a health-giving bath in the sea. A scene he noticed himself on the beach and immediately asked the accompanying priest for permission to make sketches. He also won a gold medal with this painting, it is considered the first pictorial representation of children suffering from polio. Sorolla offered it to the Spanish state at a bargain price, but conservative politicians blocked the purchase.

Sorolla was obsessed with open-air painting, to which he devoted himself in all weathers. It was precisely this supposed resistance to the weather that proved to be his undoing: it took its toll on his health, and so he died exactly a century ago, on August 10, 1923, at the age of 60. For some time now, Sorolla's works have been appearing more frequently in exhibitions again, after his appreciation had waned in the late 20th century. One place to visit is the Museo Sorolla in Madrid, where old photographs from the painter's life can also be seen.