[2] He received his initial art education at the age of 9 in his native town,[3] and then under a succession of teachers including Cayetano Capuz, Salustiano Asenjo.

A long sojourn to Paris in 1885 provided his first exposure to modern painting; of special influence were exhibitions of Jules Bastien-Lepage and Adolph von Menzel.

[7] An even greater turning point in Sorolla's career was marked by the painting and exhibition of Sad Inheritance (1899, seen at right), an extremely large canvas, highly finished for public consideration.

[8] Campos has suggested that the polio epidemic that struck the land of Valencia some years earlier is present, possibly for the first time in the history of painting, through the image of two affected children.

A series of preparatory oil sketches for Sad Inheritance was painted with the greatest luminosity and bravura, and foretold an increasing interest in shimmering light and of a medium deftly handled.

A special exhibition of his works—figure subjects, landscapes, and portraits—at the Galeries Georges Petit in Paris in 1906 eclipsed all his earlier successes and led to his appointment as Officer of the Legion of Honour.

[3] The show included nearly 500 works, early paintings as well as recent sun-drenched beach scenes, landscapes, and portraits, a productivity which amazed critics and was a financial triumph.

[15] Although formal portraiture was not Sorolla's genre of preference, because it tended to restrict his creative appetites and could reflect his lack of interest in his subjects,[16] the acceptance of portrait commissions proved profitable, and the portrayal of his family was irresistible.

Sometimes the influence of Velázquez was uppermost, as in My Family (1901), a reference to Las Meninas which grouped his wife and children in the foreground, the painter reflected, at work, in a distant mirror.

[21] Thus, not only did his daughter pose standing in a sun-dappled landscape for María at La Granja (1907), but so did Spanish royalty, for the Portrait of King Alfonso XIII in a Hussar's Uniform (1907).

[22] For Portrait of Mr. Louis Comfort Tiffany (1911),[23] the American artist posed seated at his easel in his Long Island garden, surrounded by extravagant flowers.

The conceit reaches its high point in My Wife and Daughters in the Garden (1910, see gallery below), in which the idea of traditional portraiture gives way to the sheer fluid delight of a painting constructed with thick passages of color, Sorolla's love of family and sunlight merged.

[33] Sorolla's influence on some other Spanish painters, such as Alberto Pla y Rubio[34] and Julio Romero de Torres,[35] was so noted that they are described as "sorollista.

[37] In 1960, Sorolla, el pintor de la luz, a short documentary written and directed by Manuel Domínguez was presented at the Cannes Film Festival.

[38] The Spanish National Dance Company honored the painter's The Provinces of Spain by producing a ballet Sorolla based on the paintings.

[40] In 2007 many of his works were exhibited at the Petit Palais in Paris, alongside those of John Singer Sargent, a contemporary who painted in a similarly impressionist-influenced manner.