Trauriges Erbe

In 1899 Sorolla set up his easel on the Malvarrosa beach at Valencia, his home city, and painted something far darker than the sunlit bathers he was becoming famous for. A monk from the local hospital of San Juan de Dios has led a group of sick and crippled boys down to the sea to bathe, a cheap treatment for children whose troubles the age still blamed on their parents' sins. Most were in fact victims of polio. Sorolla gave the huge canvas the bitter title 'Sad Inheritance,' and later said he had suffered terribly painting it and would never take on such a subject again. When he showed it in Paris in 1900 it won the exhibition's grand prize, after which he turned almost entirely to light, sea and holiday crowds.