dark-brown hair on the pillow are truthfully expressed. One mother and
babe, all mothers and babes, are in this picture. Turn to that old
rascal in a brown cloak, who is about to taste a glass of wine. A snag
gleams white in his sly, thirsty mouth. The wine tastes fine, eh! You
recall Goya. As for the boys swimming, the sensations of darting and
weaving through velvety waters are produced as if by wizardry. But you
never think of Sorolla's line, for line, colour, idea, actuality are
merged. The translucence of this sea in which the boys plash and
plunge is another witness to the verisimilitude of Sorolla's vision.
Boecklin's large canvas at the new Pinakothek, Munich, is often cited
as a _tour_ _de force_ of water painting. We allude to the mermaids
and mermen playing in the trough of a greenish sea. It is mere
"property" water when compared to Sorolla's closely observed and
clearly reproduced waves. Rhythm--that is the prime secret of his
vitality.

His portraiture, when he is interested in his sitters, is excellent.
Beruete is real, so Cossio, the author of the El Greco biography; so
the realistic novelist Blanco Ibañez; but the best, after those of
his, Sorolla's, wife and children, is that of Frantzen, a
photographer, in the act of squeezing the bulb. It is a frank
characterisation. The various royalties and high-born persons whose
counterfeit presentments are accomplished with such genuine effort are
interesting; but the heart is missing. Cleverness there is in the
portraits of Alphonse; and his wife's gorgeous costume should be the
envy of our fashionable portrait manufacturers. It is under the skies
that Sorolla is at ease. Monet, it must not be forgotten, had two
years' military service in Morocco; Sorolla has always lived,
saturated himself in the rays of a hot sun and painted beneath the
hard blue dome of Spanish skies.