Uncovered unpublished painting by Sorolla

TheUniversity of Lleida, the oldest in the Kingdom of Aragon, has authenticated an unpublished Sorolla, which has remained unknown until now because it was owned by a family. A painting made in 1883 by the famous Valencian artist, it is an early work depicting a little girl lying on her bed struggling between life and death.

Ximo Company, professor of Art History at the University of Lleida and head of the CAEM - Centre d’Art d’Época Moderna, said about the painting that “it is a key theme in the history of art that only great artists have been able to represent in a convincing and real way, moving away from rhetorical conventions and very bland depictions.” He added, “This is a work in which the very young Sorolla, barely 20 years old, with sublime tenderness and realism deals with the difficult depiction of a pure and innocent little girl in the transit of death.”

Other artists throughout art history have dealt with this delicate subject, but none have depicted it with the realism and expressive tenderness that can be seen in Sorolla’s work.

The painting’s owners approached the institution to verify its attribution, and after several months of analysis at CAEM, starting with the signature and minute details, Company and Anna Pedret came to the certain conclusion that it is an uncatalogued work by Joaquín Sorolla, since the short white brushstrokes with which the little girl’s hat was painted are very similar to the child’s lace in Jaime García Banús (1892), but it is a very recurrent technique in the painter.

Moreover, to further confirm this, the world’s foremost expert on Sorolla’s painting, Blanca Pons-Sorolla, the artist’s great-granddaughter, was consulted and without any doubt confirmed the attributive hypothesis.

Uncovered unpublished painting by Sorolla

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