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Why Your “Whites” Look Wrong (And How Sorolla Got Them Right) - the Atelier Newsletter
Published 9 days ago • 4 min read
As this is the start of Season 2 of "the Atelier", there's going to be a little bit of change in the way the Newsletter is presented. The idea this season is to study a Masterwork and try to understand one key concept that is interesting, relevant and useful to artists of all levels.
This week, we start with Joaquín Sorolla (Spanish, 1863 - 1923).
Why Your “Whites” Look Wrong (And How Sorolla Got Them Right)
White isn’t really white
Every painter faces this problem: painting light is so difficult! You know that feeling : the color looks good when it’s just paint on your palette but you struggle so much to make it look like light in the picture. And it shows up most brutally on white subjects. An object that’s supposed to be white looks like it’s all grey or brown. It looks anything but white.
The key to this problem is simple, but not obvious: white isn’t really white. Just like in photography, where white balance changes everything, painting “white” means balancing it with the colors around it. Knowingly or not, painters use white balance all the time.
Niña, by Sorolla (1904) oil on canvas
Look at Joaquín Sorolla’s Niña (1904). The dress of the child on the beach should be the flattest part of the painting. It’s just white fabric, right? Yet it’s not painted with white at all, it looks more like a beige or cream color. On some places, it looks bright orange, purplish, rose or muted green. If you zoom in, it’s a giant mess but if you step back, it’s an atmosphere: sunlight you can almost feel on your skin. That’s the power of white balance in painting.
Sorolla, a Master of Light
Sorolla’s probable palette was rich but manageable: cadmiums - yellow, orange and red, several versions of them apparently, cobalts, violets, ochres, viridian, Prussian blue, ultramarine, and lead white. From this, he wasn’t chasing “correct” colors — he was chasing light.
All these samples are "white"
In Niña, there’s barely any untouched “white” at all. The white dress contains yellows where the sun hits directly, the folds are suggested with roses and yellow. The shadow side of the dress, on front of the little girl is made of a light beige with violets in the cool side of the shadows, and subtle blues where the sea reflects.
Also note the liberties the artists took with realism to serve the purpose of representing the atmosphere : the seems are painted with almost pure rose instead of just a darker version of the beige used in the rest of the dress. This is why the dress looks luminous instead of flat.
Guiding the Eye with Color
White isn’t just a technical challenge here — Sorolla uses it to steer your gaze. The dress, the brightest spot on the canvas, pulls your eye instantly. From there, your attention drops to the warm reflections in the sand, then bounces back up to the children in the surf, where small touches of light echo the girl’s dress.
And you have those parallel stripes in the waves, like a natural road with white lines, taking the mind to a distant horizon. They’re white, they’re vibrant, they’re just between straight and geometric enough to slash the composition in three and natural and organic enough to feel real.
Some light tones can also mimic the white, echo it’s presence, like the pink wavelets rippling near the two big white stripes of foam. See the variety in tones : pink ripples on top, yellow orange below.
So if you want to use white as brilliantly as Sorolla, don’t think of it as white! Think of it as a compositional tool. Place your brightest light objects where you want the viewer to look first, then echo smaller accents elsewhere to keep the eye moving and make it vibrate with chromatic variety.
Color Creates Atmosphere
Beyond subject and composition, Sorolla uses color to create space. Look at the water. The closer waves are darker, richer, with violet shadows. The farther water shifts cooler and lighter, with less contrast. That’s aerial perspective at work: distance reduces contrast and saturates with atmosphere.
There’s also the brilliance of the reflection on the surface of the sand : it’s very specific, the water is incredibly shallow here, it’s like a super thin mirror on top of the sand, so you have to understand that the brown coloration of the sand will affect the reflection of the girl.
To paint this reflection, Sorolla took all the colors he had for the little girl and simply added a portion of brown, like the one you see in the corner. Actually, it’s the same thing for the sky, we don’t see it here but the sky is a lot bluer than that, what we have here in the reflection is a mix of the light blue of the sky and the dark brown of the wet sand.
It’s not a stiff formula. Sorolla still sneaks in subtle warm notes, like orange reflections dancing in the water, to tie near and far together. That balance of cool atmosphere and warm accents gives the scene its freshness.
Final Thoughts:
Beginners struggle with light colors because they only imagine white as something as white as snow, but white can also be represented by a color. Sorolla shows us that white is relative — it’s balance, temperature, and context. A color only transforms into light if you paint it within its rightful context.
Next time you reach for white paint, think of Sorolla ask yourself what flavor you can add to make it feel like light and make it fully a part of the context.
Free Art Newsletter filled with the best oil painting and drawing tips, directly from the Atelier tradition. Timeless techniques to enjoy weekly to grow and inspire.
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