Joaquin Sorolla was the eldest child born to a merchant Joaquin Srolly and his wife, Concepción Bastida. His sister Konchitta was born a year later.
In August 1865 the children were left orphans, their parents have died, possibly from cholera. They were brought by relatives of their mother.
He received his early art education at the age of fourteen, in his hometown at the teacher Salustino Asen Kaytano Kaputs.

At the age of eighteen years, he moved to Madrid, is actively studying a collection of paintings in the museum del Prado.
After completing his military service, at twenty-two Sorolla obtained a grant that allowed four years to be held in Rome to study painting. In Italy he was under the patronage of Federico Pradilya, director of the Spanish Academy in Rome, who discovered a Sorolla talent.

In 1885 he traveled to Paris, where he took his first exposure to modern painting. He was under the impression of great exhibitions of Jules Bastien - Lepage and Adolf von Menzel. Returning to Rome, he continued his studies with Benlliure Jose Emilio Sala, and José Villegas.
In 1888 Sorolla returned to Valencia and married Clotilde García del Castillo, which first met in 1879, when she worked in the studio of his father.

In 1895 they already had three children: Maria, born in 1890, Joaquín, born in 1892, and Helen, born in 1895.
In 1890 they moved to Madrid, and the next decade Sorolla focuses on the work. He draws a lot of paintings on mythological, historical and social themes, for participation in the Paris salons and international exhibitions in Madrid, Paris, Venice, Munich, Berlin and Chicago.

His first striking success was achieved with the picture of "Margarita" (1892), won a gold medal at an exhibition in Madrid, then first prize at the Chicago International Exhibition, where it was purchased and then donated to the Museum at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
He immediately was recognized as head of the modern Spanish school of painting. His painting "The Return of Fishing" (1894) was adopted in admiration at the Paris Salon in 1894 and acquired for the Luxembourg Museum. She pointed brush already a mature artist.
The turning point in Sorolla's career was marked by painting "Garden of Inheritance (1899), very large canvas, which he brought to the public. The painting depicts the paralyzed children swimming at sea in Valencia, under the supervision of a monk.
Artwork received official recognition, as well as the Grand Prix and a medal of the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900 and the Medal of the National Exhibition in Madrid in 1901.

After this picture the artist never returned to the social theme.
Two picture-sketch to the picture he gave to his American friends, artist John Singer Sargent and Mary William Chase.
Since the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900 he received the title Knight of the Legion of Honor, and in the next few years Sorolla was made an honorary member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris, Lisbon and Valencia.
Special exhibition of his work was exhibited at the Gallery Georges Petit in Paris in 1906 and eclipsed all his previous successes. They showed almost 500 works-sun-drenched beach, landscapes and portraits.
Although subsequent large-scale exhibitions in Germany and in London were met with more restraint, but in England in 1908 Sorolla met Archer Milton Huntington critic who suggested he make an exhibition in America. The exhibition was held in New York in 1909 and includes 356 paintings, 195 of which sold. Sorolla spent five months in America, which drew more than twenty portraits.

Early in 1911 Sorolla visited the United States a second time, 161 paintings were exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago. In the same year the artist met with the Archer M. Huntington in Paris and signed a contract for a series of paintings about life in Spain.

Since the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900 he received the title Knight of the Legion of Honor, and in the next few years Sorolla was made an honorary member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris, Lisbon and Valencia.
Special exhibition of his work was exhibited at the Gallery Georges Petit in Paris in 1906 and eclipsed all his previous successes. Were shown nearly 500 works - the sun-soaked beaches, landscapes and portraits.

Huntington assumes work depicting the history of Spain, but the artist suggested that the picture of the regions of the Iberian Peninsula and a series called "Provinces of Spain". I drew the artist canvases in the open air, set off in search of nature in Navarre, Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, Elche, Seville, Andalusia, Extremadura, Galicia, Guipuzcoa, Castile and Leon. In each picture the people were dressed in local costumes nautsionalnye. In 1917, by his own admission, subjects and themes of paintings have been exhausted. He graduated from the work by mid-1919.
In 1920, drawing another portrait in his garden in Madrid, it splits the stroke.

Being paralyzed for more than three years, he died in 1923.