In 1901, Sorolla and Jiménez Aranda painted portraits of each other. They had known each other since the early 1890s, successively occupied the same study in Madrid, and it was the painter from Seville who introduced Sorolla into the costumbrism painting of Mariano Fortuny. The Valencian artist, here at the age of 38, is portrayed hard at work, wearing his smock and bearing his tools, namely palette and brushes. He is looking at us very closely, as if we were the subject of his work ( Text drawn from cat. exp. Los Objetos Hablan, Museo nacional del Prado, 2016, p. 52)