Brief Biography-Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida was orphaned at two and raised by his aunt in Valencia. He studied at the San Carlos Fine Arts Academy as a teenager. He married in 1888 and, by 1895, had three children. He won a scholarship in Valencia to go to Italy, where he stayed for three years before settling in Madrid in 1890. His first major success was at a Paris exhibition in 1906, gaining him international recognition with several honours. In Paris, the artists Adolph von Menzel and Jules Bastien-Lepage, influenced him, which may be evident in his en plein air scenes. In 1909, he had further success in New York with a solo exhibition in the Hispanic Society. In Spain, the Society commissioned him to paint murals of life for the Society’s building. His travels throughout Spain, painting each landscape individually, are said to have exhausted him to the extent that he suffered a stroke and died in 1923. He was a painter of portraits and landscapes. One of his most famous paintings was of American President William Howard Taft. His house in Madrid is open to this day as a dedicated gallery.