Madame Sorolla (Clotilde García del Castillo, 1865–1929) en noir

By 1906 Joaquín Sorolla was the most sought-after painter in Spain, and the woman he set down here in a black evening gown was Clotilde García del Castillo, his wife of nearly 20 years. He posed her in their Madrid home and filled the corners with his own trade. Behind her hangs a female saint he had painted during the first months of their marriage in 1888, and at the far right he let the edge of another canvas show, a quiet nod to his countryman Velázquez, who three centuries earlier liked to remind viewers they were looking at a picture. Three years later Sorolla shipped the portrait to New York for a one-man show at the Hispanic Society that drew enormous crowds. The Metropolitan Museum bought it straight off the wall.