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Those who saw Sorolla's art at the Paris Exposition, 1900, and at the Georges Petit Gallery, Paris, a few years ago need not be reminded of his virile quality and masterly brush-work. Some art lovers in this city are aware of his Sad Inheritance, the property of Mr. John E. Berwind, which has been hung in the Sunday-school room of the Ascension Church, Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street.
This joy of motion and this continual suggestion of youth and vitality form the link that binds together the so dissimilar ideals of the old and the modern master. Sorolla's inspiration is by far the simpler. His art reflects the brilliant sunshine of the Mediterranean coast, the tonic quality of the fresh air, and the unconventionality of life by the sea.
If we glance at Sorolla's young girls and young boys racing along the hot beach, or his bathers exulting in their "water joy," we recall at the same moment the "Primavera" with its swift-stepping nymphs, the wind gods in the "Birth of Venus," or the "Judith" with her maid moving rapidly along a flower-strewn path.
Beruete is real, so Cossio, the author of the El Greco biography; so the realistic novelist Blanco Ibañez; but the best, after those of his, Sorolla's, wife and children, is that of Frantzen, a photographer, in the act of squeezing the bulb. It is a frank characterisation.
A bull-fighter in the ring, as was Goya perhaps the legend stirred him to imitation he is a healthy athlete. His vitality, indeed, is enormous, though it does not manifest itself in so dazzling a style as Sorolla's. The demerits of literary comparisons are obvious, yet we dare to think of Sorolla and Zuloaga as we should of Théophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire.
Often in searching out refinements of execution the eye discovers refinements of fact in the scene to be portrayed and makes its selection with greater distinction than would be possible at first sight. But Sorolla's prompt selective vision flies to its goal like a bee to a honey-bearing flower. He takes what he wants and leaves the rest with the dew still on it.
A snag gleams white in his sly, thirsty mouth. The wine tastes fine, eh! You recall Goya. As for the boys swimming, the sensations of darting and weaving through velvety waters are produced as if by wizardry. But you never think of Sorolla's line, for line, colour, idea, actuality are merged.
Señor Beruete, the Velasquez expert, truthfully says of Sorolla's method: "His canvases contain a great variety of blues and violets, balanced and juxtaposed with reds and yellows. These, and the skilful use of white, provide him with a colour scheme of great simplicity, originality, and beauty."
To follow the popular taste would lead us into strange errors in our judgments of art, and only rarely would produce a predilection capable of lasting over a generation. How is it, then, that we fearlessly may range ourselves on the side of the public in admiration of Sorolla's art? Because the painter has cast off the slavery of the conventional vision.
Because I am very tall and broad and deep-bosomed and vivid and high colored, and have strong white teeth that crunch up about as much food in the twenty-four hours as most field hands consume, and altogether I am very much like one of the most vigorous of Sorolla's paintings, that is the probable pathological reason I have always preferred an evolved Whistler masculine nocturne that retreats to the limits of my comprehension and then beckons me to follow.
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