The Skipping Rope

Painted in summer 1907 during his stay in La Granja de San Ildefonso, Sorolla painted Elena, his younger daughter, seen here in the foreground playing with other girls with a skipping rope near one of the fountains in the gardens of the Royal Palace near Segovia. The whole work is marked by the search to capture the instant impression, brought to life by the movement of all the figures momentarily frozen, as in a photographic snapshot. There is a photograph in the Museo Sorolla where the artist’s daughter is shown skipping on the beach in Valencia, in a very similar posture to the one the artist would later transfer onto this canvas, where the jump is shown clearly in the lack of contact between the figure and her shadow on the ground. Sorolla may have based this painting on the photograph, since the human eye cannot retain this posture.