Mother, Sorolla Museum, Madrid at Spain is culture.

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Outstanding works / Modernism and avant-garde movements / Sorolla Museum

Mother

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'Mother'. Sorolla Museum, Madrid © Ministerio de Cultura

Category

Painting

Date

1895

Artist

Joaquín Sorolla

Original title

Madre

Sorolla Museum
Madrid
Madrid

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A minimalist composition with exceptional use of light showing the painter’s wife after the birth of their youngest daughter, alongside her in bed.

Sorolla’s precision in portraying the specific light tone is extreme: a fresh shadow shrouds the scene like a blessing – after the birth, rest and happiness now reign.

It is one of the best examples of Sorolla’s ability to transmit intense physical sensations and equally intense psychological states. The emotion of the father-husband and the painter’s gaze merge in the filtered light caressing the sea of white where two heads emerge and the entire world disappears into the absorbing intimacy of a moment of absorption.

Both the composition and the framing and pictorial treatment show full modernity, similar here to Catalan modernism.