Sorolla depicts the steep, barren hillside that rises from the banks of the river Tagus near the city of Toledo in Spain. In the upper left-hand corner of the composition is the castle erected by Alfonso VI (1072–1109) to protect the convent of San Servando. El Greco, the sixteenth-century painter whom Sorolla greatly admired, includes the same site at the left in his greatest surviving landscape, View of Toledo, which is also in The Met’s collection.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Castle of San Servando, Toledo
Artist:Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (Spanish, Valencia 1863–1923 Cercedilla)
Date:1906
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:26 1/4 x 36 1/2 in. (66.7 x 92.7 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Gift of Archer M. Huntington, 1922
Object Number:22.119.1
Inscription: Signed and dated (lower right): J Sorolla y Bastida / 1906
Archer M. Huntington, New York (1909–22)
London. Grafton Galleries. "Exhibition of Paintings by Señor Sorolla y Bastida," May–July 1908, no. 81.
New York. Hispanic Society of America. "Catalogue of Paintings by Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida," February 8–March 8, 1909, no. 17.
Catalogue of Paintings by Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida. Exh. cat., Hispanic Society of America. New York, 1909, p. 89, no. 17, pl. 17, remarks that the ruins of the castle are on the left bank of the Tagus and notes that the Castle of San Servando was built by Alfonso VI to protect the convent of that name and the city.
"Accessions and Notes." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 17 (July 1922), p. 162.
Harry B. Wehle. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Catalogue of Italian, Spanish, and Byzantine Paintings. New York, 1940, pp. 306–7.
Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 91.
Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 169, ill.
Blanca Pons-Sorolla and Víctor Lorente Sorolla, ed. Epistolarios de Joaquín Sorolla. Vol. 3, Correspondencia con Clotilde García del Castillo (1891–1911). Rubí (Barcelona), 2009, p. 133 n. 340, reproduce a photograph of Sorolla painting from this view on p. 135.
Blanca Pons-Sorolla inSorolla and America. Ed. Blanca Pons-Sorolla and Mark A. Roglán. Exh. cat., Meadows Museum, Southern Methodist University. Dallas, 2013, pp. 24, 294, 300, no. 5, ill. (color) [Spanish ed., "Sorolla y Estados Unidos," Madrid, 2014, pp. 26, 345, 348, ill. (color)], states that it was produced between late October and early November of 1906 and that Archer Huntington acquired it at the 1909 New York exhibition.
Blanca Pons-Sorolla inSorolla in America: Friends and Patrons. Ed. José Luis Colomer et al. Dallas, 2015, pp. 52, 80, no. 3, ill. (color), notes it as among the paintings Huntington donated to major American museums between 1922 and 1926.
This landscape depicts the barren hillside that rises from the left banks of the Tagus River near the city of Toledo. The Castle of San Servando is visible in the upper left corner. It was built by Alfonso VI (1072–1109) to protect the convent of San Servando. Pons-Sorolla and Sorolla (2009) reproduce a photograph of the artist painting this same landscape before the castle from this perspective.
Henri Rousseau (le Douanier) (French, Laval 1844–1910 Paris)
ca. 1907
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