Author: Citra Nilakresna Dewi

This painting was created during the summer of 1909 at the beach in Valencia, after Sorolla’s triumphant success and had his first solo art show in the United States. Strolling along the Seashore is one of the artist’s most important works. The woman on the left is his wife, with his daughter on the right side walking along the shoreline. In this painting, his daughter was captured when she steps forward with the form of the dress in the wind and completes the whole artwork with the rolling of the waves that depicts movement and gives this piece a sort of life of its own. The water and the sandy seashore shown in long blue, purple, and turquoise brushstrokes – become an abstract backdrop for the refined figures of its primary subject. The downward angle of the subjects, the absence of the horizon, the empty swathe of sand in the lower foreground, and the cut-off of one of the figure’s sunhats are all part of a technique known as photographic framing. There are also paintings with the same setting and scene at Valencia seashore. However, in this painting, the tone is quite different from others. It perfectly defines the iconographic genre of the ‘elegant promenade’ with well-dressed bourgeois figures strolling along the seashore and enjoying beach life. Strolling along the Seashore is currently in the collections of the Sorolla Museum in Madrid, Spain. Artist: Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida Title: Strolling along the Seashore Date: 1909 Style: Impressionism Genre: Painting Location: Sorolla Museum, Madrid, Spain Dimension: 200 cm x 205 cm Oil on canvas Reference Myddoa ↗ Arts and Culture ↗