Contadina de Asís
Joaquín Sorolla, 1888
Contadina de Asís is a portrait Joaquín Sorolla painted in 1888, during a retreat he spent in Assisi. The sitter is a peasant woman shown at half-length, her head turned slightly to the right against a landscape dotted with poppies. A red headscarf knotted at the nape of her neck frames her face, and a red bodice sits over her white blouse. The work is often seen as a turning point in the Valencian painter's career: he moved away from the warm, earthy tones of academic painting toward a brighter palette influenced by the Impressionists. Sorolla sought a natural, realistic beauty, and here he achieves it with a fresh, confident brushwork in which the red of the poppies and the scarf gives the composition its structure. It is modest in appearance, yet it points to the direction his painting would take in the years that followed.
- Painter
- Joaquín Sorolla
- Date
- 1888
- Medium
- oil paint, canvas
- Dimensions
- 40 × 56 cm
- Museum
- Sorolla Museum, Madrid
- Genre
- portrait
- Depicts
- woman
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