Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is the fourth Sorolla monograph that I have added to my collection and it is a good book. Certainly if you are looking for an inexpensive book with a number of reproductions of his work in oil, you won't go wrong with this one. The title is a little deceptive. Sure, there are quite a few masterworks in the book but there are also a number of minor paintings and the book leaves out some paintings that I would consider to be among his masterpieces, perhaps these are in private hands and permission to include them was not available. The reproduction quality is good but not outstanding. All of the paintings are reproduced in color. Generally, the images lean to the cool, slightly washed out side. Also, I think the matte paper sucks a bit of life from the images. The painting on the glossy dust jacket has a brilliance and pop that is lacking inside the book. The text is a limited, but informative, summary of the artist's life. I enjoyed the many B&W reproductions of period photographs showing the artist at work, exhibitions, his studio and scenes from a Valencia beach, for example. There are absolutely no images of Sorolla's small oil studies (apuntes) or drawings, which I understand would not be considered masterworks, though many of them directly relate to the paintings in this book, so some could have been included. For the record, my favorite Sorolla book is "The Painter Joaquin Sorolla" by Edmund Peel. Even though I have seen many Sorolla's in the flesh it is tough to say which book has the most accurate reproductions - they are all surprisingly different. The reproductions in Peel's book, for example, are the most saturated and warm (I am almost sure that Peel's images exceed the reality of the paintings though, in this regard). They communicate summer sunshine and the paintings look more painterly and less like illustrations than in this book. Peel's book also includes a number of apuntes and has both color and black and white reproductions of every painting, so you get a better sense of the value structure of each work. In summary, this is a good Sorolla monograph at a low price. I don't know how many will be printed, but historically, Sorolla books go out of print quickly and then are very expensive to buy used, so don't delay if you think you will like it, especially if you like Sorolla and don't already own a book on him!