He completed the final panel by July 1919. By 1917 he was, by his own admission, exhausted. Each mural celebrated the landscape and culture of its region, panoramas composed of throngs of laborers and locals. Despite the immensity of the canvases, Sorolla painted all but one en plein air, and travelled to the specific locales to paint them: Navarre, Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, Elche, Seville, Andalusia, Extremadura, Galicia, Guipuzcoa, Castile, Leon, and Ayamonte, at each site painting models posed in local costume. Huntington had envisioned the work depicting a history of Spain, but the painter preferred the less specific Vision of Spain, eventually opting for a representation of the regions of the Iberian Peninsula, and calling it The Provinces of Spain. The major commission of his career, it would dominate the later years of Sorolla's life. These fourteen magnificent murals range from 12 to 14 feet (3.7 to 4.3 m) in height, and total 227 feet (69 m) in length. In 1911, Sorolla met Huntington in Paris and signed a contract to paint a series of oils on life in Spain. The series was commissioned by Archie Huntington for the Hispanic Society of America (HSA). Vision of Spain, (Spanish: Visión de España) and also known as The Provinces of Spain, is a 1913–19 series of fourteen monumental canvases by Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla depicting the customs, costumes, and traditions of regions of Spain. Hispanic Society of America, New York City Cycle of paintings by Joaquín Sorolla Vision of Spain

JOAQUÍN SOROLLA by Roger Diederen