Vision of Spain, also known as The Provinces of Spain, is a 1913–19 series of fourteen monumental canvases by Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla depicting the customs, costumes, and traditions of regions of Spain. The series was commissioned by Archie Huntington for the Hispanic Society of America.[1]

Vision of Spain
The Provinces of Spain
Artist	Joaquín Sorolla
Year	1913–19
Medium	Oil on canvas
Location	Hispanic Society of America, New York City

Background

In 1911, Sorolla met Huntington in Paris and signed a contract to paint a series of oils on life in Spain. These fourteen magnificent murals, range from 12 to 14 feet (3.7 to 4.3 m) in height, and total 227 feet (69 m) in length.[2][3] The major commission of his career, it would dominate the later years of Sorolla's life.

Huntington had envisioned the work depicting a history of Spain, but the painter preferred the less specific Vision of Spain, eventually opting for a representation of the regions of the Iberian Peninsula, and calling it The Provinces of Spain.[4] Despite the immensity of the canvases, Sorolla painted all but one en plein air, and travelled to the specific locales to paint them: Navarre, Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, Elche, Seville, Andalusia, Extremadura, Galicia, Guipuzcoa, Castile, Leon, and Ayamonte, at each site painting models posed in local costume. Each mural celebrated the landscape and culture of its region, panoramas composed of throngs of laborers and locals. By 1917 he was, by his own admission, exhausted.[5] He completed the final panel by July 1919.[6]

The Sorolla Room, housing the Provinces of Spain at the Hispanic Society of America, opened to the public in 1926.[7] The room closed for remodeling in 2008, and the murals toured museums in Spain for the first time. The Sorolla Room reopened in 2010, with the murals on permanent display.[8]

Critical reception

In 1957, Ruth Matilda Anderson, Curator of Costumes at the Hispanic Society of America (HSA), published her book Costumes: Painted by Sorolla in his Provinces of Spain. In great detail, she commented on the ethnographical background, referring to local dress and lifestyles, regional Spanish history and literature of Sorolla's paintings. Her book included 105 black-and-white illustrations, showing details of the canvases, as well as accompanying sketches by Sorolla in oil or watercolor from the collection of the HSA, paintings from private collections and oil studies in the Sorolla Museum in Madrid.[9]

Full series

• 
  Castilla. La fiesta del pan (1913)
• 
  Sevilla. Holy Week Penitents (1914)
• 
  Aragón. La jota (1914)
• 
  Navarra. El concejo del Roncal (1914)
• 
  Guipúzcoa. Los bolos (1914)
• 
  Andalucía. El encierro (1914)
• 
  Sevilla. The Dance (1915)
• 
  Sevilla. The Bullfighters (1915)
• 
  Galicia. La romería (1915)
• 
  Cataluña. El pescado (1915)
• 
  Valencia. Las grupas (1916)
• 
  Extremadura. El mercado (1917)
• 
  Elche. El palmeral (1918-1919)
• 
  Ayamonte. La pesca del atún (1919)

References

На других языках

[es] Visión de España

[fr] Vision d'Espagne