Summer Days
From Sorolla to Hopper
28 March - 6 September 2015
Sala Noble
The invention of photography in the 1800s brought a new means of visually portraying the world and it shared prominence and competed with the visual arts. With a documentary or artistic intent, or even as a private pastime, professional and amateur photographers recorded countless testimonies of life in general and, naturally, of places and people related to summer holidaying. The examples featured in this contextual exhibition complement the overview provided by the third-floor display through a collection of photographic reproductions of an interesting and curious late nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury photographic material, largely unpublished, which illustrates how the different social classes spent their summers by the beach both in Spain and in the rest of Europe.
Finally, the show includes a few examples of the costumes and accessories that were worn by women summer holidaymakers in the early decades of the twentieth century and can be seen in the photographs and paintings on display. These summer dresses, bathing suits and accessories, hand and machine sewn in cotton, linen and silk, date from between 1900 and 1915.