Swimmers, Jávea

The beautiful surroundings and the unique colour of the seawater in Javea (Alicante) fascinated Sorolla: in a letter to his wife Clotilde in 1896 he writes that the landscape in Jávea is like a dream. During the productive summer spent there in 1905 the artist enthusiastically approached the subject of swimmers in the emerald green water, experimenting with a brighter and stronger palette in an in-depth study of light and movement. The pretext for this painting is the two children swimming towards the rock in the top left corner; however, the real subject of the canvas is the effect of the light filtered through the moving water, disintegrating the outlines of the children’s bodies, which are fragmented and broken down into precise, confident brushstrokes using intense tones of green, orange, blue and purple.