Lighthouse Walk at Biarritz

On 11 June 1906 Sorolla opened his first big one-man show in Paris, at the Galerie Georges Petit, with nearly 500 paintings, studies and sketches. When it was over he spent a few weeks in Biarritz, the French resort just across the border from Spain and a summer favourite of Spanish high society. This canvas comes from those weeks.

Women in long white dresses and broad hats walk the grassy cliff path near the lighthouse, their veils and skirts pushed sideways by the sea wind. One holds a parasol, another leans on a walking stick, and a small girl in a red coat stands between them. Below lies the beach and a rock with an arch worn through it. The canvas is long and low, almost three times as wide as it is high, so the walk runs straight across it.

Three years later Sorolla sent it to America. When his touring exhibition reached the Copley Society in Boston in the spring of 1909, the Bostonian Peter Chardon Brooks reserved it and bought it once the show had closed. His daughter gave it to the Museum of Fine Arts in 1922.