La bata rosa

The Pink Robe shows an everyday scene inside a beach hut near the shoreline. An older woman helps a younger one take off a bathing robe that is still wet. The work is dated 1916 and is kept in the Museo Sorolla in Madrid. It is also known as Coming out of the bath or After the bath. On Valencian beaches in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, girls usually bathed wearing light robes, while small boys went in naked, and Sorolla returned to this subject in several canvases. This picture is generally regarded as one of his most accomplished works, painted when he had reached full maturity. Its large scale suggests the influence of the murals he had been producing since 1912 for the Hispanic Society of New York. The composition rests on figures silhouetted against the light and on damp folds of cloth that recall Greek sculpture, while the full, rounded forms and poses evoke the Three Graces, giving the women an almost classical dignity. The painting is above all a study of light: it enters through the reed ceiling, filters through the fabrics, bounces off the white robes and fills the shed. Sorolla renders it with quick, confident brushstrokes that try to capture a fleeting moment.

Painter

Joaquín Sorolla

Date

1916

Dimensions

208 × 126 cm

Museum

Sorolla Museum, Madrid

Movement

Post-impressionism

Depicts

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