The Sorolla family pleads with Culture to export a picture of the painter

The descendants want to sell for five million ‘End of day’, protected since 2018
End of day, one of the works of the exhibition that the National Gallery of London is dedicating to Sorolla, is a painting in litigation. The Superior Court of Justice (TSJ) of Madrid will soon decide the future of the canvas, which coexists with the Sorolla family since Joaquín painted it almost 119 years ago. In 2018, the Community of Madrid launched the file to declare it Cultural Interest Asset (BIC).

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Sorolla is always fashionable
In the last 70 years, this work has been hanging in the living room of a floor of less than 100 meters, in the center of Madrid. Its owners, according to sources close to the family, want to sell it abroad for five million euros, given that in Spain they can not find a willing buyer to pay this amount. However, they have met opposition from the Ministry of Culture, which has banned them from selling outside the country, considering it to be «a work of particular importance for the Spanish historical heritage.»

The Sorolla family has appealed before the court of administrative litigation of the TSJ the resolution of the Board of Rating, Valuation and Exportation of Spanish Historical Heritage, which denies them the authorization to export End of day. «It is one of the best paintings made by the artist during his stay in Jávea in the summer of 1900, a period of special relevance in his production, since it marks the beginning of his most brilliant period», declares the Qualification Board, which applies article 51 of the Royal Decree of Spanish Historical Heritage and declares it inexcusable. In the allegations presented by Cultura before the court, the value of the canvas is highlighted «the shortage of relevant works of that particular moment of its production», as well as its good state of preservation.

‘Bath time’ (1904), the most expensive ‘sorolla’ in history.

The work belongs to seven brothers, great-grandchildren of Sorolla, who are going through a difficult economic situation: only two of them have permanent jobs and one suffers from Parkinson’s. «Unfortunately we need the money. We would like to keep it for a lifetime, but we can not. We want it to be in a public museum, better than in my mother’s house, «clarifies a representative of the family.

The reasons for the appeal against the decision of the Board of Rating, Valuation and Exportation of Spanish Historical Heritage, as stated in the allegations of the Ministry of Culture, are the «violation of private property,» the «violation of free movement of merchandise in the Union «and that in 2007 an export permit was granted, with two favorable reports, written by Javier Barón, curator of the Prado Museum, and Florencio de Santa Ana, then director of the Sorolla Museum. Before the court, the descendants of the Valencian painter have argued that the ministry «has let out more important paintings in these years,» and claim «the same generosity» that his family had with the State to cede the funds and the Sorolla Museum building .

In 2007, when the family had permission and buyer, the grandson of the painter repented at the last moment. He was born in the house that today is the Sorollay Museum selling him would have been betraying himself. The authorization to export the painting expired after one year.

Artistic quote
When things got complicated for the new generation of the Sorolla from 2016 and the father was no longer there, the family demanded a new export permit. But this time Culture denied it. For that reason, they demand to revoke the order of Culture and that they allow them to sell it to a great museum. Both the Orsay, in Paris, and the National Gallery, in London, have been interested in End of the day, which marks a point of artistic inflection in Sorolla’s career.

From the ministry they prefer not to make statements because «it is a sub judice case», but they argue that inexportability is regulated by the Law of Historical Heritage. Nor have they wanted to clarify whether the State would have an interest in buying the painting.

The economic claims of the family can not be met in the Spanish market: the highest price paid for a work by Sorolla was € 1.5 million 29 years ago for the Francisqueta box, figure of the Valencian fisherwoman, in the house of Edmund Peel auctions, during the golden decade of nineteenth-century painting sales. Its quotation remains stagnant or declining, since the most succulent figure of the last seven years did not reach the half million euros, by Fisherman of shrimps (1908).

Abroad, the market continues to appreciate the sorollas: in 2003 Sotheby’s sold La hora del baño (1904) for 5.5 million euros, Joaquín Sorolla’s record auction quantity. The family maintains that he is a painter very represented in Spain and little known in other countries. «It is not an essential table

for Spain and it is its best brand abroad «, adds the consulted spokesman. That is not so well known is endorsed by Prince Charles of Wales during the opening of the exhibition Sorolla: Spanish Master of Light, in the National Gallery: «I had never heard of this painter».

1900, YEAR HINGE OF THE SOCIAL DRAMA TO PLACIDEZ BURGUESA
In 1900 the Valencian Joaquín Sorolla achieves what seemed impossible for a Spanish painter: he wins the Universal Exposition of Paris, with the immense, sad inheritance! It will be the last time you approach the social drama. He wants to be a new painter. Now it’s time to be cosmopolitan and move away more and more from naturalism, with a desire to highlight and contrast the colors, to accentuate the stains of pure paint on the effects of water.

End of the day, which could have been the poster of the National Gallery if the family had accepted, marks the transition from the obscurities and miseries of the end of the century to the luminosity of the early gardens. A sort of hinge in Sorolla’s career, which in 1900 breaks with its themes and gives itself to new tastes, to the social chronicle of the placid life of the bourgeoisie. From the pain of the marginalized to the privileges of those who contemplate. It is the beginning of his final wish: to open «way out of Spain», as he wrote to his friend Pedro Gil in 1893.