“Sewing the Sail”
Now for some Spanish sunlight.
“Sewing the Sail” is a gorgeous oil on canvas painting by the Spanish artist, Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, from 1896. Known as the “Master of Light”, Sorolla is mostly remembered for his plein air Impressionism inspired paintings portraying both the Spanish people and landscapes under the bright sun.
In this painting, Sorolla depicts five women and two men as they work together to mend a boat’s sail. They are working outside on a covered patio surrounded by verdant plants and flowers in bloom. Sunlight filters in through the leaves and creates a dappled light that covers the entirety of the scene. An open door in the background gives the viewer a glimpse into the wider world, with the distant sea bathed in bright and saturated sunlight.
Sorolla spent some time in the beginning of his career working on more serious paintings of social issues and portrait work. This solidified his place in the art world as one of the new modern artists of Spain. After marrying and having children, his art shifted focus and he devoted more time to paintings that were sought after by collectors. These included paintings that focused on the rural and more domestic side of life. These lighter subject matters also loosened his brush stroke and lightened his palette with more luminosity, allowing more sunlight in.
Sorolla liked to paint the local scenes from his hometown of Valencia in eastern Spain, on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and they were very popular with collectors. As he worked on these types of paintings, he became more and more interested in painting the effects of sunlight as beautifully illustrated in this piece here.
“Sewing the Sail” is currently in the collections of the Ca’ Pesaro, the Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna in Venice, Italy.
For more on Joaquín Sorolla, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
