This is a painting I saw in the National Portrait Gallery a few days ago. It is entitled El Borracho, Zarauz, and was painted in 1910 byJoaquín Sorolla.
El borracho means the drunkard, and the scene is set in Zarautz, a coastal town in the Basque Country, in Spain.
The text to the side of the painting say that the man’s friends are pushing another glass in front of the drunkard, who sits with a watery gaze.
We can see the glass held in front of the drunkard.
It’s easy to imagine how he is sitting and what the world looks like through his drunken eyes, the unsteadiness with which he looks into some imagined distance.
But if the painting had been named The Prophet, I might have read a different expression in the man.
The man on the left, looking straight back at the viewer, well his expression changes too, depending on how we read the scene.
And the expression of the man holding the drink, he is attentive because he wants to get every drop of wisdom from the prophet.
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