The Return from Fishing

The Return from Fishing: Hauling the Boat (Retour de la pêche, le halage de la barque) is an 1894 oil on canvas, 265 × 403.5 cm, by Joaquín Sorolla, showing oxen dragging a fishing boat ashore on the beach of El Cabañal in Valencia; it is in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

Sorolla painted the huge canvas for the Paris Salon. In a letter to his friend Pedro Gil of November 1894, now in the Museo Sorolla archive, he wrote that after a hard summer's work the Salon picture had been tiresome, that at difficult moments he had nearly given it up and carried on out of pride, and that he thought it very original and luminous; he enclosed a sketch to show its layout. He sent it to the Salon of the Société des Artistes Français in 1895, together with White Slave Trade.

Valencian fishermen traditionally used oxen to pull their boats up the shore each evening, a sight Sorolla would have known since childhood. Here two straining animals haul a Catalan boat with a wind-filled lateen sail through the shallow surf. At right a fisherman drives the team, another stands in the water steadying the hull, a third on board works the sail, and in the foreground a man carries a heavy plank to slide under the keel. The viewer seems to stand almost at water level, and the shadow of the sail sets off bursts of light against the blue of sea and sky.

The painting was a great success at the Salon, where its Mediterranean atmosphere and lively scene of manual work appealed to city audiences; according to the Musée des impressionnismes Giverny, Sorolla received a second-class medal, the highest award given that year. The French state bought it from him for 6,000 francs for the Musée du Luxembourg. It moved to the Louvre's Jeu de Paume gallery in 1922 and the Musée national d'art moderne in 1946, and in 1977 was assigned to the Musée d'Orsay.