“Good morning – I slept very well – now, half past eight I am going to paint in the gardens, the day is shrouded in a thick fog, it will probably last until noon, when I hope to have a session with the Queen, we will see the program for today. lots of kisses … and see you later. The whole program is out, I painted in the garden and I painted the Queen. The correspondence he maintained Joaquin Sorolla with his wife Clotilde during their numerous trips they take the visitor through the exhibition “Sorolla in the real Alcazar”the major exhibition at the end of this year and the first quarter of next year in the oldest royal palace still in use in Europe. A “unique and unusual” opportunity to rediscover the landscape side of the Valencian artist captivated by the light of Seville and the Alcazar itself when he was responsible for producing royal portraits.
The exhibition, which can be visited until March 1, 2026, from 9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., is the result of collaboration between the Board of Directors of the Real Alcázar, the Sorolla Museum Foundation and the Unicaja Foundation and brings together 15 works whose particularity is that they were painted in the enclave where they will be seen for the first time. Sorolla carried out many others, up to fifty, in very productive days during the stays he made between 1908 and 1918. “Back from the Alcazar, I finished a beautiful study of light, with this one there are six, this afternoon I will finish the one I started yesterday and there will be seven. “I think they are worth the sacrifice of not being together,” he wrote to his wife in February 1908.
This selection, which includes two paintings of the gardens of his own house for which he took inspiration from those of the palace complex, gives a good example of the idea on which it is based: the link between painting, landscape, architecture and history.
The exhibition is organized by Roman Fernández-Baca And Enrique Vareladirector of the Sorolla Museum, and coordinated by Mariano Vergara Utrera. His presentation this Monday afternoon also included a social event attended by several members of the municipal corporation, chaired by the mayor. Jose Luis Sanzhead of Plastic Arts at the Unicaja Foundation, Emilie Garrido; personalities from the art world, the bullfighter Juan Ortega – a great admirer of the work of the Valencian – and two of his great-grandchildren, Fabiola Almarza Lorente-Sorolla And Antonio Mollá Lorente-Sorolla. Paradoxically, intense rain accompanied the event, although, as the mayor recalled, it was also present at the time the artist lived here, as evidenced by his letters with Clotilde.
The director of the Sorolla Museum emphasized in his presentation that it is not easy to follow in the footsteps of such a restless and traveling painter, “from his native Valencia, from the Mediterranean to Cantabria, from the interior of Castile and Andalusia, but also from monumental cities like Granada and Seville.” From this desire to capture his travels with brushes, a collaborative project was born years ago at the Sorolla Museum to bring the works to where they had been painted by himself. And finally, after a visit to San Sebastian, Castile, Mallorca or Galicia, among others, we can see it in Seville. “Sorolla’s sensitivity was not foreign to this magical and sensory landscape,” he insists on the painter’s “enchantment” for this place. For Varela, “Sorolla at the Alcazar” represents a “fusion between reality and what is represented, painting and architecture.” And this is verified by leaving the Gothic room where the exhibition was organized and where the Mercury Pond (one of the gardens reflected in the exhibition) is visible at first glance. The choice of this space, which, because it is not usually used for exhibitions, required a museographic adaptation, is not a coincidence either. The banquet took place in the Gothic hall for the marriage of Charles V and Isabella of Portugal, whose fifth centenary falls on March 11, 2026.
“Sorolla in the Real Alcázar of Seville” offers a tour of the courtyards and gardens that captivated the Valencian painter during the first years of the 20th century, the Garden of Flowers, the Garden of Troy, the Garden of Dance and the aforementioned Garden of Mercury, that is, the Spanish-Muslim courtyards and the Renaissance spaces of the monument.
He Garden of Troy It occupies a central place in the exhibition, since Sorolla considered it one of his favorite spaces. His fascination was such that he even reconstructed part of this garden in his own house in Madrid – today the Sorolla Museum – which he affectionately called “the Sevillian lung”, a testimony to his deep admiration for the Alcazar and the city.
“For the painter of light, his stays at the Alcazar were a decisive moment in his career, a great source of inspiration for these visual poems on Andalusian light”, underlined Emilia Garrido, while emphasizing the dialogue established between the frame and the work, the “artistic excellence and historical value” of this exhibition.
In the route proposed by the curators of “Sorolla to the Alcazar”, which shows that it is accompanied by a program of activities for the whole family, the curators insisted on Sorolla’s passion for landscape, a genre of his own and which he cultivated just before his stays in Seville, in 1907 with La Granja de Segovia. “Since then, he has never stopped painting them until the end.” At the royal palace, all this exuberance seemed irrefutable. “Light effects, shadow play, vegetation, architecture and water”they explained. With two very marked characteristics, “he saw himself in a space of intimacy, he painted at his best, he leaned towards pure creation”, hence these “visual poems or haikus” and, on the other hand, the work of documentation: “I have almost painted the gardens everywhere, so the end of my stay here comes at the right time”, he wrote to his wife.
During the inauguration, José Luis Sanz highlighted the cultural and historical value of the exhibition and explained that “this exhibition once again places Seville in its rightful place, that of a true capital of Fine Arts. Today we bring together, in one of the most valuable heritage spaces in Spain, the work of one of the great masters of contemporary painting.
Likewise, the first mayor also highlighted the deep bond that unites Sorolla with Seville: “Sorolla was called to paint this town. Few places like the Real Alcázar offer this dialogue between light, architecture, vegetation and history that he was looking for. Here, he discovers a Seville that is eternal and changing at the same time.
Catalog
The exhibition is completed by an illustrated catalog and a program of parallel activities which includes: Guided tours of the spaces of the Alcazar where Sorolla has installed his easel. Educational workshops for schools and specialized conferences on the painter’s work and his relationship with Seville. These activities underline the dynamic character of the Real Alcázar as a cultural space with an educational and international vocation.
The exhibition can be visited from December 16 to March 1, 2026, from 9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. (last access at 5:00 p.m.). It is included in the general entrance to the monument and it’s free for Sevillians.
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