“Paris Boulevard”, masterpiece by Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla has recently resurfaced after being considered lost for 134 years. It is currently on display at the Royal Collections gallery in Madrid, Spain, as part of exhibition titled Sorolla, One Hundred Years of Modernity.
Sorolla has been an influential painter, renowned for his portraits, landscapes, and paintings showing themes from society and history. Between 1889 and 1890, Sorola visited Paris, France, and the visit inspired him to create “Paris Boulevard.”
The piece shows an outdoor seating area of a busy café and people walking down the street while featuring a self-portrait of Sorolla as a man sitting at a table with a soldier and enjoying a cigar. It was an unusual addition to the artist’s opus, being considered a departure from his signature bright and vivid works.
Sorolla exhibited the finished painting at Spanish National Exhibition in 1890 and sold it to a private collector shortly after. It was the last time painting was seen and art experts ended up concluding that the artwork was lost. However, recent investigation showed that the family which originally bought the painting actually kept it in its possession and they ended up lending it to Royal Collections gallery for the exhibit.
“The panoramic composition of the work—which is very photographic and which doesn’t worry about the figures which are cut off at each end—really grabs your attention and gives it a freshness that’s a taste of what Sorolla would go on to do more emphatically,” curator Blanca Pons-Sorolla, who is also Sorolla’s great-granddaughter, said of the piece. “The drawing is very accurate, the brush strokes restrained, and the details have a real virtuosity that defines the more careful and defined painting of his early works.”
