Triste héritage

On a bright Valencian beach, a monk in black leads sick and disabled children into the sea. Sorolla saw the scene by chance one morning, and turned it into the painting that won him the grand prize in Paris.

The story behind the painting

Sorolla wrote that he was busy one morning sketching Valencian fishermen when he saw, near the sea, a group of naked children and a single priest a short distance from them. They were children from the Hospital of San Juan de Dios. He said their presence made a painful impression on him, and that he did not miss the moment: he asked the hospital director for permission to work on the spot and paint the scene from life. Wikipedia dates the finished painting 1899, while Wikidata gives 1898.

What to look for

The canvas is large, 210 by 285 cm. On the Malvarrosa beach in Valencia a crowd of naked children, sick and disabled, gathers at the water's edge. Some lean on crutches because of polio. A monk dressed in black from the asylum hospital of San Juan de Dios has brought them to bathe in the seawater as a therapeutic measure. In the background some children are already in the sea. Look at how the dark figure of the monk stands against the light of the beach and the bodies of the children around him.

Meaning and intent

The title, with its exclamation mark, points beyond the beach. The children carry a sad inheritance, illness and disability they did not choose. Sorolla's own words, which call them the detritus of society, show how society saw them, while his decision to stop and paint them from life shows he wanted that society to look. The sea is here not a place of holiday pleasure but of hope for healing, and the painting holds both the light of Valencia and the weight of the children's lives.

Legacy

Sorolla exhibited the painting at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900, where he received the grand prize, and it won a medal of honour at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Madrid in 1901. Conservative politicians blocked its purchase by the Spanish state. It went to New York, was shown at the Hispanic Society of America in 1909, and was given by John E. Berwind to the Episcopal Church of the Ascension on Fifth Avenue, where it stayed for many years. In 1981 the Savings Bank of Valencia bought it and brought it home. Sorolla also gave oil studies of it to John Singer Sargent and William Merritt Chase.