Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida

Joaquín Sorolla was a Spanish painter celebrated for dazzling scenes flooded with Mediterranean sunlight. Born in Valencia in 1863, he became a master of capturing bright light on water, skin, and white clothing, especially in his beach scenes of children playing and fishermen at work along the Spanish coast. His confident, dashing brushwork made the sun almost tangible.

Hugely successful in his lifetime, he traveled internationally and won major honors, and he undertook a vast series of murals depicting the regions of Spain for a museum in New York. His sun-soaked style is sometimes called luminism for its brilliance. Sorolla remains one of Spain's best loved painters, above all for the way he made sunlight itself the subject of his art.