Buscando mariscos, Playa de Valencia

Joaquín Sorolla, the Spanish painter, signed and dated this beach scene 1907, and Sotheby's catalogue note says he painted it late that year. The note translates the title as Hunting Shellfish, Beach in Valencia. The oil on canvas measures 60.3 by 94.9 centimetres. A girl wearing a plaid dress and kerchief stands barefoot in the shallow tide, bent over the wet sand to look for clams and lifting her skirt clear of the water. The beach shows no horizon, boats or other figures.

The painting was shown at the Grafton Galleries in London in 1908. Knoedler acquired it directly from the artist in 1912. Sotheby's catalogue gives the next owner as probably Joseph Pulitzer II of St. Louis, Missouri, from whom it passed by descent.

Sotheby's sold it in New York on 8 November 2013, as lot 48 of its 19th Century European Art sale, against an estimate of $1,000,000 to $1,500,000. Sotheby's own listing of Spanish paintings gives a sale price of $4,869,000. A report by IANS and EFE, carried by Business Standard, rounded the result to $4.8 million. Neither source states whether the figure includes the buyer's premium.