Joaquín

Joaquín Sorolla García, Sorolla’s second child and only son, was born in Valencia in 1892. As his mother wished, he was made the first director of the Museo Sorolla, and in his will left an important part of his father’s work and the paintings he himself had inherited to the Fundacion Museo Sorolla.Joaquín is portrayed here as a fashionable, elegantly dressed young man. His green gabardine and yellow gloves, as well as his pose, transmit the image of the perfect gentleman and sportsman. The social changes in the early years of the 20th century brought new fashions and habits, with tearooms and outdoor cafés becoming the meeting places for fashionable modern society. This cosmopolitan atmosphere led to the new aesthetic of the sporting dandy as seen in contemporary photographs of Joaquín who, as Javier Perez Rojas, an expert on Sorolla’s work remarks, “can be found in his armchair in the same clothes as he wears to drive his automobile” .