Here in the Spanish region of Valencia in 2023 we have been celebrating the centenary of the death of the impressionist painter Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863-1923). Sorolla was a great master of light and his paintings were often informed by photography, as his first job was lighting assistant to a photographer in Valencia. He continued to use photography throughout his painting career.
One of his most treasured paintings in the national collections in Madrid is The White Donkey, a composition that portrays two agricultural labourers of Campo de Criptana – a town in La Mancha – one seated on a donkey and the other standing alongside, with the typical windmills of the region in the background, as featured in Miguel de Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote. Sorolla painted this in 1912 and these agricultural workers were chosen from various men who had gathered in the market place for a chance to earn three pesetas (about 100 euros in those times) as models for the artist.
He chose two who he considered to have the best conserved typical Manchegan dress, and we know their names: Sandalio Lara, known as Cartafea —who we see mounted on the donkey— and his friend Ramón Torres Casco de Albarda. Sorolla took photographs to prepare his composition, and was photographed while painting, and also a photograph was taken during a break which shows Sandalio Lara sitting on a wall with his wife and daughter. The windmills and the edge of the town of Campo de Criptana are seen in the background.
Sandalio Lara and his family represent a life unchanged since the time of Cervantes. The third centenary of the publication of the first part of Don Quixote had been nationally celebrated in 1905, just seven years before this painting. In a sense, Sorolla is photographing and painting the people of the 16th century in this moment. The painting captures the ‘Sanchos of Criptana’: for this is a humble place where the men are not nobles like the delusional ‘Knight of the Sad Countenance’, but lowly squires. In his 1905 article for the liberal newspaper El Imparcial, ‘Azorin’ (pen name of a travel writer from Madrid who stayed in Campo de Criptana) wrote:
¿Qué significa esto de que estos excelentes señores son los Sancho Panzas de Criptana?… en Criptana no hay Don Quijotes; Argamasilla se enorgullece con ser la patria del caballero de la Triste Figura; Criptana quiere representar y compendiar el espíritu práctico, bondadoso y agudo del sin par Sancho Panza.
This refers to Azorín hearing some men of Criptana describing themselves as the ‘Sanchos of Criptana’ and he asks, “What does this mean that these excellent gentlemen are the Sancho Panzas of Criptana? … In Criptana there are no Don Quixotes; Argamasilla is proud to be the homeland of the Knight of the Sad Countenance; Criptana wants to represent and summarise the practical, kind and acute, peerless Sancho Panza.”
Now, it is no coincidence that Joaquín Sorolla chose Campo de Criptana as the place to paint typical working men of La Mancha, for he had read the above 1905 article by Azorín and was a friend of his in Madrid. He most likely travelled to Criptana in search of two ‘Sanchos’ for this composition. The clue is in the title that Sorolla gave to the painting: Tipos de La Mancha. He was in search of ‘typical’ men of the region. He had gone there to find two ‘Sanchos’ and he had selected the best on offer from those gathered in the market square, in order to paint a scene from Castilla as it might have appeared three hundred years earlier.
But the painting took on its own life and became one of Sorolla’s most famous compositions in the public gaze. His title was supplanted by the more popular title the public gave the painting, El Burro Blanco.
The change of title shifts the the viewer’s gaze from the men to ‘the white donkey’. A shift to a national symbol rather than a focus on the historical representation of local peasants in a time capsule of local tradition, as Sorolla seems to have intended. Like the bull in Picasso’s Guernica, the donkey represents an aspect of the Spanish character, the connection to the soil, the blistering sun of the plains, the glare of whitewashed dwellings, made of adobe painted with ‘cal’. If you want the painting of Spanish war, you look at Guernica, but if you want the representation of Spanish peace it is El Burro Blanco.
So, in my first journey away from here in two years, I have my return train tickets booked and my hotel room reserved in Campo de Criptana in the first week of October.
My aim is very simple: I am following the white donkey to see where he leads me. I shall try and find the spot in which Sorolla painted El Burro Blanco. Who knows whether that is possible? Today it might be a multi-storey car park or a Mercadona supermarket, or maybe it will be just as it was in 1912 and perhaps I will also meet some of the remaining ‘Sanchos of Criptana.’
Note: for the writings of ‘Azorín’ mentioned above, see La Ruta de Don Quijote on the Cervantes virtual library, Chapter XII.