Painted in 1915 but signed and dated in 1917, the present work is one of a select number of oils that Sorolla executed on La Malvarrosa beach at Valencia that year. Describing the series Blanca Pons Sorolla notes: 'There are not many, but they are of great quality.' (Blanca Pons Sorolla, Joaquín Sorolla, London, 2005, p. 276). The striking spontaneity of Sorolla's depiction of the young girl running into the sea, the boy lying on the shore and the small child playing in the waves is matched by the artist's dramatic use of foreshortening to eliminate the horizon line, the reduction of all other pictorial elements to bare essentials: sea, sand and boats, and his audacious palette. Over the preceding 15 years Sorolla had painted a series of increasingly... [http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2009/19th-century-european-paintings-including-german-austrian-central-european-paintings-the-orientalist-sale-spanish-painting-and-the-scandinavian-sale-l09661/lot.85.html]