On the morning of July 18, 1923, Joaquín Sorolla was on the beach at his home in Valencia, painting a portrait of his wife and daughter. He was about to begin painting a group portrait of himself and some friends. Suddenly, he clutched his chest and began to moan. His wife and friends helped him into their car and started for the hospital. But 35 minutes later, as they were crossing the Plaza de la Virgen, where Valencia's famous market was held on Sundays, Sorolla stopped breathing. "He had been talking with great animation," one of his friends recalled, "and had suddenly stopped as if some invisible hand had strangled him." Sorolla died that afternoon three days after his sixty-fifth birthday from a heart attack.
Oil painting reproduction of Joaquín Sorolla