The Skipping Rope

In the summer of 1907 during his stay in La Granja de San Ildefonso, the Spanish painter Sorolla painted his younger daughter Elena. The scene takes place in the gardens of the Royal Palace near Segovia, where girls are caught playing with a skipping rope. The whole work is influenced by the desire to capture a fleeting moment, with figures momentarily frozen just as in a photographic snapshot. Museo Sorolla features a photograph in which the artist’s daughter is shown skipping on the beach in Valencia, in a very similar manner to The Skipping Rope. Probably inspired by the photograph, the artist would later transfer that jumping motion onto canvas. However, this time the jump was shown clearly to be in mid-air with no contact between the figure and her shadow on the ground. There is evidence to believe that Sorolla may have based this painting on the photograph since the human eye cannot easily catch a jumping motion.