Retour de la pêche : halage de la barque

Two oxen haul a fishing boat out of the surf while the wind still fills its sail. Sorolla painted this Valencian beach at a huge scale, four metres wide, and Paris fell for its Mediterranean light.

The story behind the painting

Joaquín Sorolla painted The Return from Fishing: Hauling the Boat in 1894, on a very large canvas of about 265 by 403 cm. The scene is El Cabañal beach in Valencia, his home region, at the moment a fishing boat comes back to shore. He sent it to the Salon of the Société des artistes français in Paris in 1895. It was a resounding success with city dwellers, who were seduced, as one account puts it, by its Mediterranean atmosphere, the manual work and the liveliness. Sorolla received the highest distinction awarded at the exhibition, and the French State acquired the canvas at that Salon.

What to look for

In the centre, two oxen in the foreground pull a Catalan boat with a lateen sail. The flapping sail swells in the wind and seems to help them. On the left a fisherman waits with a plank, probably the one the boat will rest on when the time comes. Another sailor sits on the neck of one of the oxen, guiding it. In the shade of the boat a man keeps watch, and in the background, in full light, a last fisherman adjusts a sheet so the wind eases the manoeuvre. The whole group stands out against blue, sea below and sky above, with bursts of light breaking through the shadow cast by the sail.

Meaning and intent

This is a picture of work, not of leisure: men and animals pulling together against the weight of the boat and the push of the sea. What made Parisians love it was the life and light in that labour. Sorolla does not idealise the fishermen but shows each one with a task, from the man with the plank to the one trimming the sail, so the eye moves round the scene like a crew moving round a boat. The play of bright sun against the deep shadow of the sail, which later made Sorolla known as a master of light, is already at the heart of this early triumph.

Legacy

After the Salon the canvas hung in the Musée du Luxembourg, then the Louvre from 1922 and the Musée national d'art moderne from 1946. In 1977 it was assigned to the Louvre and has been shown at the Musée d'Orsay ever since. It has also travelled widely: to New York, Saint Louis, San Diego and Valencia in 1989, to Madrid and Paris for the Sargent and Sorolla show in 2006 and 2007, to the Prado in 2009, to Giverny and Munich in 2016, and to London's National Gallery in 2019 for Sorolla: Spanish Master of Light.