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Sorolla: Spanish Master of Light, National Gallery, London
There are some luminous treasures in an exhibition of work by the leading Spanish impressionist

JOAQUIN SOROLLA Y BASTIDA was born in 1863 in Valencia at a turbulent time in Spanish history, when civil wars were raging.

The country’s first republic was briefly established in 1873 and the political and intellectual ferment continued and intensified with the emergence of the “Generation 98” of novelists, poets, essayists and philosophers.

Among its most prominent figures were writers Miguel de Unamuno, who Sorolla painted in 1912, Ramon del Valle-Inclan, Pio Baroja and the poet Antonio Machado.

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