STAR of the show at Sotheby’s major art auction in the UK is Valencia-born painter Sorolla’s Boats on the beach (Barcas en la playa) which is expected to attract bids averaging a million euros.

On November 24, Sotheby’s will open its doors to art fans with the cash to shell out on original paintings of global renown.

This year, the auction intends to concentrate on 19th-century European painting.

And Sorolla, whose work spanned the end of the 1800s through to the early 20th century, was highly-acclaimed for his late Romantic paintings that depicted simple scenes of local life in his home province.

Barcas en la playa was created in the summer of 1909, when the artist was in his heyday and had just returned to his home country after the resounding success of his exhibition at the Hispanic Society of America in New York.

The canvas shows fishermen returning to shore after a day’s work on the sea, and recreates sails undulating in the winds and children playing on the waves.

Vice chair of Sotherby’s Spain, Pablo Melendo, calls the work ‘exquisite, very modern, and painted at a time when Sorolla was at his peak’.

Since 1926, the picture has been owned by the Club Español in Buenos Aires (Argentina).

It is expected to fetch between 880,000 and 1.32 million euros when it goes to auction later this month.