Boys on the Beach by Sorolla: Mediterranean Light Made Flesh (1909)
Wet skin, shallow water and a midday sun so strong that it turns a boy's shoulder into a small white flame. Three boys lie in the shallows of a Valencian beach, the nearest stretched out on the wet sand, the other two further into the sea, where the waves wash over them. There is no story, no horizon and no sky, only bodies, water and light. Joaquín Sorolla's Boys on the Beach (Chicos en la playa), painted in 1909 and now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, is the high point of the series of children in the sea that made him famous as the painter of Mediterranean light.
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Artist: Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863–1923)
Date: 1909
Medium: Oil on canvas, 118 × 185 cm
Collection: Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid (P004648)
Provenance: Given by the artist in 1919 to the Museo de Arte Moderno; in the Prado since 1971
What does the painting show?
The composition is built on a diagonal that pulls the eye from the bottom left corner into the picture. The nearest boy, fair-haired and pale-skinned, lies on his stomach on the wet sand, propped on his elbows. The second lies further into the water, and the third, darker and tanned, floats in the background where the waves break. As the Prado's catalogue notes, each boy seems more relaxed than the one before as they recede into the scene, and their skin changes colour with them: from the white flesh with mauve reflections of the nearest boy to the reddish bronze of the furthest.
Sorolla cuts the scene off sharply at the top, so that we see no horizon at all. The sea becomes a surface of broken light painted in broad strokes of turquoise, blue, violet and mauve. Look at the shadows: they are not grey or black but violet, and each boy has a double silhouette, his shadow on the sand and his reflection in the film of water. On the driest figure, the highlights are thick, matte touches of white paint; on the wet bodies further out, they become brighter and more liquid.
The painter of light
Sorolla was born in Valencia in 1863 and spent most summers of his life painting on its beaches, especially El Cabanyal and La Malvarrosa. He worked outdoors, quickly and on large canvases, to catch the effect of the sun at a particular moment. After winning the Grand Prix at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1900, he became one of the most celebrated painters in Europe. In 1909, the year of this picture, he held a huge solo exhibition at the Hispanic Society of America in New York, which drew enormous crowds and led to his monumental commission for the Society, the Vision of Spain murals.
His approach to light has often been compared with that of the Impressionists, but his colour is warmer and his drawing firmer. Compare the dusk light of John Singer Sargent's Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, another great painting of children and light, or the dissolved London fog of Monet's Houses of Parliament, Sunset.
Where can you see it?
Sorolla himself gave the painting to the Spanish state in 1919. It hung in the Museo de Arte Moderno and later in the Museo Español de Arte Contemporáneo before entering the Prado in 1971. Today it is on display in the Prado, whose collection also includes Raimundo de Madrazo's After the Bath. Many more of his beach scenes can be seen at the Museo Sorolla, his former house and studio in Madrid.
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Watch the video essay (in Spanish) on @SapiensVerbum on YouTube.
Sources
Museo Nacional del Prado, collection record, Boys on the Beach (P004648); Wikipedia, “Joaquín Sorolla”.
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