Page 41 - Orient Collection

14. Troops and Slaves Parading at The City Gates of AL- HAMBRA (GRANADA-Spain)

Artist: Joaquin SOROLLA y BASTIDA, Spanish, (1863 - 1923)
Execution date (approximate): 1900
Téchnique: Oil on Canvas (signed lower left)
Measures: 50 x 73 cm.
Description: The Museum of Prado p.130: quote “This was Sorolla’s most important work...”
Legends of José Zorrilla. The Poem of - la Sorpresa de Zahara (1841).
The takeover of Zahara by The king of Granada, Mulay Hassan Ali in the year 1490, and
parading the Troops and prisoners at the puerta d’Elvira of the Al-Hambra (Granada). The
painting was a special demand to J.Sorolla by the King of Spain Alfonso XIII in memory and
honor to the friendship that his Father King Alfonso XII had with the Poet, José Zorrilla. The
painting was acquired lately by the Marqueses de Torrelaguna.

Exhibitions
De Delacroix A Kandinsky; L’orientalisme En Europe.
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique 15.10.2010 - 09.01.2011.
Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstifung, München 28.01.2011 - 01.05.2011.
Musées des Beaux-Arts, Marseilles, 27.05.2011 - 28.08.2011.
(Réunion des Musées Nationaux de France, rmn)

Publications
• Legends of Jose Zorilla, by Manuel Pedro Delgado de 1901, p.242-243.
• The Book of Joaquin Sorolla Museo National Del PRADO-Madrid-Spain, p.129 -130
• L’Orientalisme En Europe, De Delacroix À Kandinsky, p.112-113.

Biography
Joaquín Sorolla studied at the Museo del Prado in Madrid from the age of 18. He then
travelled to Rome, where he studied with José Benlliure, Emilio Sala, and José Villegas
Cordero and worked with F. Pradilla, the director of the Spanish Academy in Rome. In 1885
he spent several years in Paris which provided his first exposure to modern painting; of
special influence were exhibitions of Jules Bastien-Lepage and Adolf von Menzel.
In 1888, Sorolla returned to Valencia, and by 1895 he moved to Madrid where he would
spend the next decade focusing mainly on the production of large canvases of orientalist,
mythological, historical, and social subjects. His works were displayed in salons and
international exhibitions in Madrid, Paris, Venice, Munich, Berlin, and Chicago.
His first striking success was achieved with Another Marguerite (1892), which was awarded a
gold medal at the National Exhibition in Madrid and first prize at the Chicago International
Exhibition, where it was acquired and subsequently donated to the Washington University
Museum in St. Louis, Missouri. Sorrolla soon rose to general fame and became the
acknowledged head of the modern Spanish school of painting. His work The Return from
Fishing (1894) was much admired at the Paris Salon and was acquired by the French
government for the Musée du Luxembourg. It indicated the direction of his mature output.
In 1897, he won the Prize of Honor at the National Exhibition of Fine Art in Madrid.

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