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Polar bear with carrot

Monday, January 15, 2018

Meine Doppelgänger


Google has an android app out now called Art and Culture. It allows you to take a selfie which matches you up with a portrait in its vast museum archive. I had various matches, with rankings, including a Whistler self portrait, but my highest degree match was to this painting by Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida.

Sorolla is a favorite of Leslie and mine, we went to his garden painting expedition at the Alhambra when we were in Granada.

The painting, executed in 1910, was a portrait of the Marquis of Vega-Inclán. Inscribed in spanish upper left is “To Benigno Vega for his Museum in Toledo." The canvas now rests at the El Greco Museum.

Bueno.

Did a little checking on my Marquis and found this:


Which is sort of interesting and coincidental because the Pan Pacific Exposition was in both San Diego and San Francisco in 1915 and it is quite possible, if not probable, that he visited the place of my birth at some point.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nice story. My artist parents urged my wife and me to visit the Sorolla Museum when we were in Madrid. His former home is surrounded by lovely gardens, tastefully filled with his paintings, and remains very much as it was when he lived and painted there. Madrid is such a beautiful city...truly a fitting location for his museum.