Clotilde in evening dress

Joaquin Sorolla painted his wife, Clotilde Garcia del Castillo, again and again across their long marriage, and this portrait dates from 1910, when he was one of the most sought-after painters in the world. He had just conquered New York with a huge sell-out exhibition, and the family's rising fortunes show here in the fashionable black evening gown Clotilde wears. She was far more than a model to him. He called her his treasury minister, and she ran the business side of his career while he painted. Sorolla catches her sitting upright, leaning very slightly forward, entirely self-possessed. The picture hangs today in the Sorolla Museum in Madrid, the house where the couple lived, now full of portraits of Clotilde from youth to old age.