{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":2,"auction_id":1,"set_id":1,"lot_number":"138","artist":"Carlos V. Francisco (1912 - 1969)","title":"Bayanihan","starting_price":14000000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1968 (lower right)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"26\" x 34\" i (66 cm x 86 cm)","property":null,"coa":"Accompanied by handwritten note signed by Gertrud Harder on the painting’s provenance.","provenance":"Commissioned from the Artist by Herbert and Getrud Harder, Angono, Rizal, 1968.","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"ABOUT THE COLLECTORS : HERBERT AND GERTRUD HARDER Of New York City <br /><br />\n\nAbounty of Filipino art can be unearthed in the\ncollection of American ex-patriates who flocked to\nManila, a city rising steadily from the ashes of War in\nthe 1950s through the 1960s. These ex-pats were benefactors —\nas well as beneficiaries — of the city’s thriving arts and artists.\nOne of the most established stars in its firmament was Carlos\n“Botong” V. Francisco; and one of the American families who\nwould patronize him were the Harders of New York City.<br /><br />Herbert and Gertrud Harder were of German origin and would\nmake their home on posh Fifth Avenue (No. 411 to be exact, at\nthe corner of 37th Street, according to painstaking and detailed\nresearch by Isidra P. Reyes who would also uncover their travel\nrecords entering Ellis Island) in the 1950s when they would\narrive from Frankfurt and later Rotterdam.<br /><br />The Harders would find themselves in Manila in the 1960s,\nand on a note scribbled on the Times Journal of August 1,\n1977 by Gertrud Harder, record their recollection of meeting\nthe famous Botong Francisco and the short history of the\npainting, “Bayanihan.” Mrs. Harder, in particular, had during\nher husband’s stay in the Philippines, had befriended Botong\nand other artists while she lived in Manila. \n<br /><br />The couple would take the work home upon their return to the\nUnited States and display it in their home<br /><br />We have bought from Carlos Francisco (Botong) the\n“Bayanihan” painting which Herbert had asked him to\npaint for him when we were in his house in Angono. One\nof Herbert’s employees, who lived in Angono introduced\nus to him.”<br /><br />—GERTRUD HARDER<br /><br /><br />On the 125th Year\nof the Birth of the Filipino Nation,\nA Masterwork Appears<br /><br />In his timeless classic, “Bayanihan’ captures the pageantry\nof Filipino life — that is woven across the tapestry of a\ntightly knit community : When men, women and children\nmoving in unison can conquer the difficult and do what\nseems impossible — to move a home, lock stock and barrel,\nin one piece. With a single stroke, Botong has produced a\ncelebration of home, brotherhood, and the Filipino spirit.<br /><br />Fitting to its theme, Bayanihan is a cinematic work, with\nits central figure — a charismatic lider, dressed in the\nshorthand that we have come to identify with another great\nman Andres Bonifacio, in white shirt and the farmer’s red\ntrouser. He summons, nay, exhorts and inspires, his friends\nnumbering a dozen apostles to throw their shoulders into\nthe task. And that task is to move a neighbor’s home to its\nnext location, only sinew, grit and bamboo poles to carry\nit. They are dressed in a variety of get-ups from history and\nRizal’s novels, the farmer, fisherman, gobernadorcillo, even\nwalking ahead jauntily that recalls the Noli Me Tangere’s\nElias. It is a microcosm of our common narrative — and is a\nperfect accent point to this year’s marking of our country’s\n125th year of the birth of a nation.<br /><br />It is a powerful scene taken from the dynamic theater of\nFilipino life — the mother and child in swaddling clothes,\nbehind her is the helpful, omnipresent elder sister (or\nate); the dutiful older son (or kuya), cradling his father’s\nprized possession, a fighting cock; a little brother and sister\n(bunso). The tyke carries a bayong with a carefully collected\nstorehouse of toys, including a sungkaan and some cooking\nspoons; his sister marches beside him bravely with a tampipi\n(or woven traveling case). There are other characters to be\nfound as there are in all the villages across the country — a\nman on a carabao, the another in a straw bowler perched\nhigh in a tree’s branches, ready to lop them off with a sharp\nbolo to make way for the bahay kubo’s thatch roof. (He is\nrecognizable as the cook sampling the sinigang in another\nwork with the theme Fiesta of Angono). Another makes\nway for the house on shoulders — pushing aside a leaning\npapaya tree, everywhere on country roads, with a sungkit.<br /><br />Indeed, because nature is so much part of Filipino life, a\nrich red road points the way forward. It is lined with dark\nslabs of rock, from which hardy bamboo grow and push\nthemselves free — symbols of the strength required to meet\neveryday life, Other stalks burst open with cloudy branches.\nThe sky is streaked with clouds and there is a forest in the\ndistance. In Botong’s hands, the arch of the bamboo and\nthe whistle of the wind would come to life and be part of a\nwhole living organism that would inhabit his canvas,<br /><br />Botong had the practiced eye of the expert conjurer a\nmagician who could tell the tale of both our past and our\npresent. He was a muralist who not only painted buildinghigh works but also larger than life characters and themes;\nand he had been doing that for more than three decades\nwhen this painting was made just a year before his\nunexpected and sudden demise.<br /><br />It was his mission to create a Filipino iconography, a\npantheon of heroes not just of those men of history, but\nwhat he considered were the unadulterated men of these\nislands, unchanged by the thrall of either the Spanish or\nAmerican conquerors. <br /><br />He found them in the north among the Ifugao, the south\namong the Muslims, but also, just as importantly, among\nhis fellow townsfolk — the kababayan that he heralded and\nthus extolled. For these ordinary men and women, religious\nand God-fearing, respectful and generous, were also to\nhim the idealized Filipino. In his paintings of small-towns, of ordinary men doing extraordinary things, unsung, in\nthe countryside, he celebrated the Filipino spirit which was\nhard-working but also down-to-earth, valiant but tonguein-cheek; part warrior and jester, all at the same time, a\ncharacter that would make the Filipino special and unique\nin all the world.<br /><br />This is what makes Botong’s townfolk paintings the most\nbeloved as they signify the Filipino’s strengths and character\nto rise above hardship and challenges and express his\nsense of spirituality.<br /><br />There are two interesting side-bars to this saga: First, the\nwork at hand is the only known easel-sized work in oil of\nBayanihan. A large mural exists in a private collection\n(shown in the black and white photograph from Carlos V.\nFrancisco: The Man and Genius of Philippine Art, by Virginia\nTy Navarro and Paul C. Zafaralla.). There are two water\ncolor studies of the same theme as well.<br /><br />Second, it comes from the collection of Mr. and Mrs.\nHerbert Harder, American ex-patriates living in Manila who\nfortuitously happened to have in their employ a man from\nAngono - who happily introduced them to Botong, who in\n1968 was at the height of his celebrity. According to Mrs.\nHarder’s handwritten notes, they went to visit Botong\nhimself in his Angono home and commissioned the work,\nwhere men, women, children, kuya and ate, the bent of the\nbamboo and whistle of the wind all move in unison.","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":24000000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":24000000,"userBid":5926,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":28838400,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":157,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/1/1/lot/138.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[],"prev":137,"next":139,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}