Studio: international art (38.1906)

The Portrait Work of Joaquin Sorolla

of inaction or repose, but never, in a whole day’s
painting, of his work. Only when daylight fails,
and then with sore reluctance as one who separates
himself from something deeply and pathetically
loved, he lays his brushes down.

Seasons recurring find him always at his easel
in the studio or the open air, most of the year
at Madrid, but the summer months upon the golden
beaches of the east of Spain, repeating, now the
manners and emotions of the people of our century,
0r now the magic of the southern sunbeams on the
Mediterranean water.

Where there is so intense an application, mated
with conspicuous and commanding native gifts,
Progress is unavoidable. Each canvas shows us
something learned beyond the lesson of the last;
respires a broader sympathy; reveals a more
Unerring insight into men and things ; a bolder,
more self-confident technique; a riper management
°f colour and of form. Always, as his work pro-
gresses, I observe him to relinquish more and
more subordinate and secondary prejudices of his
own in favour of a swifter, safer recognition of the
Passions and the prejudices of the sitter; a fine
Melazquez-Uke ambition of restraint, or, in a word,
less mannerism but a greater individuality.

The lesson of Sorolla’s life is profitable, both to
artists in particular and to Spain at large. The
rarest of exceptions among Spaniards is an earnest,
self-devoting, indefatigable worker such as this.
The race from which he springs is naturally and
congenitally disinclined to either manual or mental
labour. Few of her citizens conduct their copious
store of native shrewdness to a practical account,
expecting at the cost of no exertion to themselves,
to reach the goal of fame without endeavouring
to run the race, though, if the Spaniards could
prevail upon themselves to work, not in unpro-
ductive waggling of the lips, or in the person of
a chance though eminent exception here and
there, but healthily and in the mass, and as
their national and normal rule of life, they
would achieve, when matched against the out-
side world, victories of surprising magnitude and
with surprising frequency.

Returning from these general considerations to
the later portraits of Sorolla, prominent among
these works, distinguished by a special eloquence
above the rest, I viewed a simple yet majestic
portrait of a king and queen, and twenty memory-
laden years of Spanish history. A royal lady
stands beside her royal son and slightly points to