The Meadows Museum at SMU will host the first major exhibition to feature the work of Spanish artist Joaquin Sorolla.

The exhibition, entitled “Sorolla and America,” will be open to the public from Friday, Dec. 13 through April 19, 2014.

Over 150 works by Sorolla will be included in this exhibition, including several of his most iconic paintings and works that have never before been exhibited publicly.

“Sorolla and America” will focus on the painter’s impact in the United States and how the artist’s works were inspired by America.

The exhibition will be arranged thematically and will feature works that Sorolla was famous for, including social realism, portraits, beach scenes, landscapes, history paintings, oil sketches, drawings and studies for decorative murals.

Works from the notable collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The J. Paul Getty Museum as well as the private collection of the U.S. Department of State will be on display.

Also included are works from Mexico, Spain and other European countries.

Each of the pieces being shown were either created in America, exhibited in America or sold in America during the artist’s lifetime.

Born in Valencia, Spain in 1863, Sorolla earned international acclaim in the late 19th and early 20th century for his skills as a painter.

His first major exhibitions in the United States took place in 1909 and 1911 and were met with an enthusiastic public response.

Positive reception of his work led to portrait commissions of notable Americans such as President William Howard Taft and Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Among the featured works in the exhibition is “Sad Inheritance” Triste herencia, one of Sorolla’s most iconic works.

The 1899 painting depicting crippled children bathing in the sea in Valencia earned one of the highest awards at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1900 and Spain’s National Exhibition in 1901.

“Sad Inheritance” was a turning point in Sorolla’s career, the piece introduced the Spanish artist to the American patrons who would eventually bring his work to America.

Other highlighted works include “Another Marguerite” “Otra Margarita” a 1892 canvas painting of a young woman accused of suffocating her child, will also be featured.

The painting received a medal of honor in the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

His 1908 beach landscape entitled “Beach of Valencia by Morning Light” will also be on display.

Sorolla tended to work “in situ,” or live painting, as opposed to in a studio, a techinique that was widely acclaimed.

Also featured is “Louis Comfort Tiffany,” another landscape painting that Sorolla created on location in 1911 at Tiffany’s country estate on Long Island.

Museum visitors will also be able to see his portrait of William Howard Taft. Sorolla was commissioned to paint the first ever portrait of the 27th president of the United States in 1909.

After April 19, the exhibition will travel to The San Diego Museum of Art and Fundación MAPFRE in Madrid.