Summer Days
From Sorolla to Hopper

28 March - 6 September 2015
Eugène Boudin

Figures on the Beach in Trouville

1869 Oil on panel, 29 x 47 cm Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection on deposit at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Figures on the Beach in Trouville
Winslow Homer

Beach Scene

ca. 1869 Oil on canvas, 29.3 x 24 cm Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection on deposit at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Beach Scene
Joaquín Sorolla

María on the Beach, Zarautz

1910 Oil on canvas, 65 x 92 cm Private collection
María on the Beach, Zarautz
Walt Kuhn

Bathers on a Beach

1915 Oil on canvas, 76 x 102 cm Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection on deposit at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Bathers on a Beach

On the beach

The seaside witnessed the development of fashions, behaviours, pastimes and equipment that painters captured on canvas in styles ranging from Impressionist, précieux and naturalist to avant-garde language. Whether they are concerned merely with depicting customs or with experimentation and exploring form, these works attest to a world which, although now long past, is a direct predecessor of today’s beach tourism.

Strolls, children at play and family gatherings on the sand, sunbathing, women’s complex beach attire, bathing huts and ropes are just some of the elements of these settings that became part of nineteenthcentury bourgeois life.