Joaquín Sorolla: White Slave Trade (1895)

Joaquín Sorolla (Spanish, 1863–1923), White Slave Trade, 1895, oil on canvas, Sorolla Museum, Image Source: **wikimedia**

“This canvas is one of the few examples that the museum preserves of the social realism that Sorolla cultivated in the period from 1890 to 1899. This current, which burst forth with force from Europe and focused interest on the most dramatic circumstances of the less favored classes, was a regular presence in the Salons of the time, in which “history” plots, that is, narrative content, were still considered necessary.

The painting represents four young prostitutes accompanied by their Celestina, who sleep tired inside a third-class carriage. Sorolla focuses more, however, on solving purely formal problems. Undoubtedly, one of the main successes of the painting is the composition, which “advances” outwards, projecting itself through a very forced fugue perspective, and which achieves that, despite the fact that the characters, almost all of them asleep, ignore the viewer, the latter feels involved by that mere spatial attraction that the composition exerts.”
Sorolla Museum (translation via google)