Oxen in the Sea

Oxen in the Sea from 1903, at the Sorolla Museum, depicts a dramatic scene of oxen being driven through coastal water — a common method of recovering fishing boats onto the beach at Valencia before the age of mechanized winches. This subject, which Sorolla painted in multiple versions, combines two of his primary interests: the working life of the Valencian coast and the brilliant effects of light on wet animals and churning water. The muscular bodies of oxen straining through the surf, their wet hides catching the sun, gave him extraordinary opportunities for the kind of vigorous, luminous painting that made his reputation.

The wet bodies of the oxen against the bright Mediterranean water create the reflective surfaces — streaks of white and warm light on dark animal hide — that Sorolla exploited with virtuoso confidence. The brushwork is at its most rapid and gestural, appropriate to the dynamic subject.