Nadadores, Jávea

Painted in 1905 at Jávea, 'Nadadores, Jávea' — 'Swimmers, Jávea' — belongs to the cluster of sea-bathing subjects Sorolla produced during his most intensive engagement with the Jávea coastline. The Jávea coves, protected by rocky headlands and blessed with exceptionally clear water, offered conditions ideal for the kind of open-water swimming that was gaining popularity across Europe as a leisure pursuit. Sorolla was himself a strong swimmer and had an intimate physical familiarity with the sea as participant as well as observer, a relationship that gave his swimming subjects a quality of authentic embodied understanding. Multiple figures in water presented him with the problem of depicting partial submersion at different depths and angles — a complex optical challenge that required different painterly solutions for the above-water and below-water portions of each figure. The 1905 Jávea campaign produced a group of closely related swimming canvases that represent some of his most sustained investigation of the figure-in-water subject.

Multiple partially submerged figures created a complex composition of fragmented, refracted, and reflected forms. Sorolla organised the figures spatially through depth of submersion and distance from the viewer, with nearer figures showing more detail and those further away becoming more dissolved into the water's colour.