The Second of May

Sorolla was 21 when he finished this, and it is nearly six metres wide. He sent it to the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Madrid in 1884, the competition that decided a young Spanish painter's career, where the safest way to be noticed was a large canvas about national history. He took the defence of the Monteleon artillery park on 2 May 1808, when the people of Madrid and a handful of gunners fought the French troops occupying the city. The two officers at the centre are the captains Luis Daoiz and Pedro Velarde, both killed that day. It won a second medal and it was the only history painting of this kind he ever sent to those exhibitions; within a few years he was working outdoors on the Valencian coast. He signed at the lower left, Sorolla, Valencia 1884, and the canvas now hangs not at the Prado, which owns it, but in the Victor Balaguer library and museum in Vilanova i la Geltru.