Sorolla Museum

The Sorolla Museum is located in the house of the artist Joaquín Sorolla, who was born in Valencia in 1863. Sorolla had this house built when he was already a well-known artist and he lived here from 1911 with his wife and eternal muse, ClotildeGarcía del Castillo, and their three children - María Clotilde, Joaquín and Elena. After the artist’s death in 1923, his family donated the house and its collections to the State and it opened as a museum in 1932. Joaquín Sorolla was working after the Impressionists and the discovery of photography, when there was an increasing interest in painting because it displays a reality continually transformed by the changing effect of the light. Sorolla attempted to capture these fleeting moments and as he does so he shows the magical transformation of a simple piece of white canvas or a reflection in water. Sorolla himself said “I always paint with my eyes”, and indeed so he does. Whatever he saw is transfigured, showing us how to look through the artist’s eyes to see more and see more clearly.