Palm Beaches To Celebrate Four Centuries Of Spanish Art, Featuring Masterpieces On Loan For The First Time In A Century From Hispanic Society In New York

We embrace the breadth of Joaquín Sorolla’s oeuvre and his global reach in the Vision of Spain gallery at the Hispanic Society in New York. The monumental series of 14 paintings known as Vision of Spain spans nearly 12-feet tall and 200-feet long and shares a rich narrative of the peoples, traditions, costumes, and customs throughout Spain.

By the time Archer Milton Huntington, founder of the Hispanic Society, commissioned the paintings in 1911 for a new gallery on the west side of the main building, Sorolla was well known in the United States following wildly successful traveling exhibitions organized by the society in 1909 and 1911. The 14 canvases were restored in 2006 and 2007 to prepare for exhibition in Valencia, Seville, Málaga, Bilbao, Barcelona, and Madrid between November 2007 and February 2010.

Now that reach is extending some 1,200 miles south to “Florida’s Cultural Capital”, The Palm Beaches, to celebrate the destination’s Spanish heritage with a series of events and exhibitions through next year, coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the city of Boca Raton.

The Hispanic Society in Upper Manhattan – which operates a museum and reference library for the study of the arts and cultures of Spain and Portugal and their former colonies in Latin America, the Spanish East Indies, and Portuguese India – will lend works by Sorolla that haven’t left its museum for more than a century to the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach. The exhibition will be the first large-scale solo presentation of a 20th-century European painter at the Norton in 18 years.

Simultaneously, the Boca Raton Museum of Art will debut a traveling exhibition, Splendor and Passion: Baroque Spain and Its Empire, featuring 57 Baroque paintings from the Hispanic Society Museum & Library.

The concurrent exhibitions will honor the enduring Spanish influences that pervade The Palm Beaches, especially in Boca Raton, where the city’s Spanish Colonial Revival aesthetic upholds the legacy of architect Addison Mizner. At the peak of his career, Mizner designed more than 50 Palm Beach villas and Florida mansions for wealthy families who continue to promote the arts scene, as well the Everglades Club (1918) in Palm Beach, the Boca Raton Resort and Club (1925), and the Via Mizner and Via Parigi historic sites in Palm Beach. The Boca Raton centennial in 2025 will honor Mizner’s career and contributions to the city by presenting a curated collection of artifacts and furnishings at the Schmidt Boca Raton History Museum, home of the Boca Raton Historical Society. Addison Mizner’s Legacy will be on view between November 13 and May 30, 2025.

Sorolla and the Sea opens at the Norton on November 23, and will be on view through April 13, 2025, showcasing nearly 50 artworks on loan from the Hispanic Society Museum & Library, which will join two works by the world-renowned Spanish master from the museum’s own collection. Sorolla’s stunning portraits, landscapes, and monumental works convey social and historical themes,while amplifying the ubiquitous sunlight of his homeland. Sorolla often sought to make his portraits appear natural, eschewing formal poses in favor of capturing intimate moments. Learn more or buy advance tickets.

In depicting his singular light. Sorolla used a variety of pigments, including cobalt-based blues, chromium-based greens, yellow ochre, cadmium yellow, vermillion, and ocher or sienna. Painted at a beach in Valencia in the summer of 1908, After the Bath epitomizes Sorolla’s mastery of mesmerizing light, shone though the woman’s translucent dress, saturated from her swim and revealing her youthful, sun-kissed glow.

Our gaze shifts from admiring the light illuminating the figure to focusing on the sea in The Beach, Valencia (Two Bathers), demonstrating Sorolla’s fluidity across figurative and landscape painting. He flexes his creative muscle by abstracting the figures in a luminous sea of lavish brushstrokes that evoke the otherworldliness of nature as light dances off the waves to create captivating colors.

The Boca Raton exhibition will be on view between November 7 and March 30, 2025, borrowing from the Hispanic Society Museum & Library’s collection of Baroque art to explore the prominent art and history of 16th and 17th-century when Spanish culture, art, and literature proliferated. More than 50 master paintings by Spain’s most recognized and appreciated artists, including El Greco, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, and Diego Velázquez, will shine new light on the most prominent collection of Hispanic art outside of Spain. Learn more about the bilingual exhibition or buy advance tickets.

Meanwhile, the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County will host Reflections of a Century: Celebrating Boca Raton’s 100 Years through Art between January 31, 2025, and March 29, 2025, to magnify the centennial festivities. Historical images of the city will be displayed alongside contemporary works by Palm Beach County artists who focus on themes of architecture, culture, and the city’s residents while also future-proofing the appeal of this artistic and cultural destination. This free public exhibition is presented in partnership with the Boca Raton Historical Society.

If you’re in search of an illuminating getaway, consider this array of trailblazing exhibitions which seek to spread joy and deepen our understanding of cross-cultural creative collaboration. In Sorolla’s words: “Art has nothing to do with ugliness or sadness. Light is the life of everything it touches, so the more light in a painting, the more life, more truth, more beauty.”