Lisa Marie Alberro

1136709

Maria At La Granja

By Joaquin Sorolla

1907

San Diego Museum of Art

An Oil on canvas portrait in impressionism style

About the Author

Before understanding more about the painting itself, let's take some history in understanding

more about the artist themselves. Joaquin Sorolla was a spanish Valencian painter. He became

known to be famous from specifically painting portraits, landscapes, and monumental works of

social and historical themes. Sorolla was especially known for painting what is the visual format.

Which includes the arrangement of lines, shapes, colors, tones, and textures. Being able to share

and make different styles of patterns with them. This helped to make a portrait have presence or

being capable of setting the mood in the painting. Specifically, as will be discussed in the art

work, we can see that Sorolla focused a lot on in an impressionist manner. Impressionism itself is

defined as a style or movement in painting originating in France from the 1860’s which helps

create a visual impression of the moment or a picture by shifting two artistic components of light

and color.

The Making of Maria At La Granja

This artwork was painted in the early nineteenth century in Spain. As Sorolla was well known to

draw with an impressionist style and with the drawing of women, children, and seasides, this

artwork is a clear representation of the same classic style Juaquin Sorolla used. The art itself is
an oil canvas of a standing woman wearing a large hat, a long summer dress, while in the sunny

seaside. She seems to be wearing what would be traditionally worn in Spain during the early

1900’s. We can see that she is at the seaside because of the background. The sand is drawn with

light strokes and there are green plants on the outside as well. The artwork is not completely

drawn straight. The sand seems to be shifting down as if she is standing in a downward angle.

The dress helps reflect the light in the painting as it seems to be morning by the way the author

uses light to portray day time. This style of artwork can help the audience find a calming view

over the painting. Much of the artwork is bright yet the colors don’t pop out as neon or diminish.

It seems to be that the author wants to portray the model and the background as realistic as he

could, yet with a soft glow. The model herself seems to look like she wants to be painted and as

if she is modeling her dress and hat. The artwork helps to show much of Sorolla's style of open

air, sunny, windy, imperfect not needing to be straight and forcefully posed. The posing seems

almost natural and can portray the attitude of the model. That could be understandable since

Sorolla was inspired by realism and impressionism.

Audience

In this form, audiences from a modern time can appreciate the historical clothing, and the way

the artist was able to almost portray a picture style of the moment. But, I think it's important to

take a look into the audience of that time period. There are a few questions that the audience

might have concerning the artwork. What significance does this have to other young women?

Who would normally keep this artwork? What message did Sorolla want to portray through the

womens expression or through the art piece? These are some things that are difficult to study

once you look at it but perhaps it could have been influential for the audience in the early 1900’s.
Perhaps the womens clothing choice could have been a popular fashion during that time in Spain.

Or perhaps the young women were inspired by the idea of an outside portrait that they wanted to

get painted in an outside environment such as the beach. Normally, we see portraits as still and in

a closed room, but this could have been a unique form of making portraits as the outside

environment itself is in nature.

More information about the art work

Today currently, the artwork, Maria at la Granja, is located in the San Diego Museum of art in

California, U.S. It is displayed with other artists' paintings and art works. The painting’s

dimensions are 85x170cm.