Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the House & Home myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.A man in a shirt and waistcoat sits on a wicker chair in front of an easel, his palette and brushes visible in one hand. A delicate parasol shields him from the unforgiving rays overhead. Around him, an Edenic refuge, whose abundant vegetation is an antidote to Madrid’s dry heat.More than a century later and it is no longer the painter Joaquín Sorolla sitting in his garden, as captured in the photograph by Arthur Byne, but his admirers who flock to the Spanish painter’s former home. The garden, in a quiet residential district, still nurtures a sense of contemplative calm, as visitors lounge on shaded benches to the sounds of murmured conversation and running water. Born in Valencia in 1863, Sorolla was called “the grandson of Velázquez and the son of Goya” by the writer Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. He exhibited in cities from Berlin to Buenos Aires, winning the Grand Prix and a medal of honour at the 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris, and producing a 14-panel masterpiece for the Hispanic Society of America, still on show in New York. His grand home, built in 1910 by the architect Enrique María Repullés in collaboration with Sorolla, befitted his international status. Split into three sections, the gardens — which he designed — invite artistic dialogue. The first two were inspired by the Moorish gardens of Andalusia: their arches, fountains, tiles and lush foliage nod to the Alcázar of Seville and Alhambra of Granada. The third is classical, with Greco-Roman-style statues, columns and a pergola.Sorolla used both his own gardens and Mediterranean coastlines as the settings — and subjects — of his work. He liked to paint immersed in nature; it was from the pergola here that he created distinctive works such as “El Tercer Jardín de la Casa Sorolla”, and his last painting, “Retrato de la Señora de Pérez de Ayala”. The museum may house his atelier, but the gardens were “his real studio”, where he produced “visual poetry”, says museum director Enrique Varela Agüí.Orphaned at the age of two, Sorolla created the house very much as a family home. Portraits of his wife Clotilde, who founded the museum after his death, and his children Elena, María and Joaquín dominate the walls as you walk through Sorolla’s exhibition space, reception room and studio on the ground floor.Also given pride of place are his beach paintings, for which he came to be known as the “painter of light”: sun rays dance on the ocean’s surface and Belle Époque figures glimmer in his sweeping brushstrokes, their skin golden and their shadows long in the light of dusk. Furniture and objects are kept just as Sorolla displayed them. In his studio are unfinished canvases on easels, rows of ceramic jugs containing his used brushes and his old paint tubes. Clocks, a globe, books by Juan Ramón Jiménez and Oscar Wilde reveal an erudite side; framed family photographs a doting one. “The magic of the museum,” says Varela Agüí, “is that it combines in one space a host of objects that tell us both about Sorolla the painter, artist and genius, but also about Sorolla the husband, father and friend.” For Varela Agüí, Sorolla’s themes of light, nature and the carefree human spirit allow his works to transcend their 19th-century context. “He is a truly contemporary artist. I don’t have to convince the visitor to form an intellectual and emotional relationship with him, because his century-old work is still today understood, felt, valued and enjoyed.”cultura.gob.esFind out about our latest stories first — follow @FTProperty on X or @ft_houseandhome on Instagram
