Sorolla: The Masterworks Author: Blanca Pons-Sorolla | Language: English | ISBN:
0847839338 | Format: EPUB
Sorolla: The Masterworks Description
Review
“This beautifully designed and produced volume brings together one hundred of Sorolla’s major paintings, selected by his great-granddaughter, who is the foremost authority on the artist.” ~
Art of the Times
“This really is a luscious book. It has large color reproductions of over 100 paintings in a high-quality printing, supplemented by black-and-white photos of Sorolla at work. Typical of Rizzoli, the printing is very good: even in these reproductions you can sometimes feel the sun and the surf that Sorolla captured so amazingly in his paintings of children at the beach, fisherman bringing in the boats, or a horse after a bath in the ocean. The paintings are shown in chronological order, so you can trace the changes in Sorolla’s style from fairly tight to much looser. If you don’t already know Sorolla—this one is definitely worth seeking out.”
~Sbenedictblog.com
“This beautifully designed and produced volume brings together one hundred of Sorolla’s major paintings, selected by his great-granddaughter Blanca Pons-Sorolla, the foremost authority on the artist. Benefiting from close proximity to the artist and his personal archives, she presents an in-depth essay that explores Sorolla’s life, work, and remarkable international legacy. With virtually all of the artist’s previous publications now out of print, this much-anticipated volume is an important addition to the literature on this great Spanish master.”
~PortraitArtist.com
About the Author
Blanca Pons-Sorolla is the foremost scholar on the work of Joaquín Sorolla and has written and contributed to numerous books.
- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: Skira Rizzoli (October 2, 2012)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0847839338
- ISBN-13: 978-0847839339
- Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 9.8 x 1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 3.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
This is the fourth Sorolla monograph that I have added to my collection and it is a good book. Certainly if you are looking for an inexpensive book with a number of reproductions of his work in oil, you won't go wrong with this one. The title is a little deceptive. Sure, there are quite a few masterworks in the book but there are also a number of minor paintings and the book leaves out some paintings that I would consider to be among his masterpieces, perhaps these are in private hands and permission to include them was not available. The reproduction quality is good but not outstanding. All of the paintings are reproduced in color. Generally, the images lean to the cool, slightly washed out side. Also, I think the matte paper sucks a bit of life from the images. The painting on the glossy dust jacket has a brilliance and pop that is lacking inside the book.
The text is a limited, but informative, summary of the artist's life. I enjoyed the many B&W reproductions of period photographs showing the artist at work, exhibitions, his studio and scenes from a Valencia beach, for example. There are absolutely no images of Sorolla's small oil studies (apuntes) or drawings, which I understand would not be considered masterworks, though many of them directly relate to the paintings in this book, so some could have been included.
For the record, my favorite Sorolla book is "The Painter Joaquin Sorolla" by Edmund Peel. Even though I have seen many Sorolla's in the flesh it is tough to say which book has the most accurate reproductions - they are all surprisingly different. The reproductions in Peel's book, for example, are the most saturated and warm (I am almost sure that Peel's images exceed the reality of the paintings though, in this regard).
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