Net Menders in Valencia

Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, regarded as the pre-eminent Spanish painter of his time, enjoyed a successful career throughout his life and left an impressive body of work that numbers over four thousand oil paintings, sketches and watercolors. At the age of 21, Sorolla won a stipend from the Valencian government to further his studies in painting and in 1885 moved to Italy. After finishing a study grant in Rome, the young painter returned to Madrid in 1889. This was a formative time when the artist was progressing toward the development of a concrete artistic identity. Sorolla himself once commented, "Resting firmly on my own base, I began fearlessly to create my own method of action whether good or bad I don't know; but it was sincere and real and the reflection of what my eyes saw and what my heart felt."

Even after a cursory examination of Sorolla's oeuvre, there can be no doubt that the sea and the activities of seaside communities emerge as a favorite theme. This charming oil sketch is a executed with a confidence and vigor that characterized many of Sorolla's works. In a white-washed courtyard a group of men and women sit in a circle and mend fishing nets. The quick strokes of the artist's brush on an unprimed canvas convey the immediacy of the scene. Further, the bright color palette dominated by reds, blues, greens and varying shades of orange imbues the canvas with a sun-drenched quality characteristic of the his pictures set near the seaside.

Blanca Pons Sorolla will include this work in her forthcoming Sorolla catalogue raisonné.