Tonight is Christmas Eve

Christmas scene typical of a well-to-do Spanish family at the end of the 19th century. In an interior, children sing Christmas carols and dance around the “Bethlehem” (as it is traditionally called to the staging and setting of the Nativity of Jesus Christ, made with small clay sculptures, typical of the Spanish Levant among other places). In this case, the woman seated in the background is Clotilde, Sorolla’s wife, and the three children are her sons. The work was done around 1898, and is painted with gouaches, black and white, on sepia paper. It is signed. Gómez-Moreno acquired it in the Rastro of Madrid / Extracted from: A.A.V.V.: Gómez-Moreno Institute (catalog). Granada, 1992, p. 153