Fernando Amorsolo’s landscapes are the crème de la crème of his oeuvre. Regarded as one of the most prominent Filipino painters, if not the most prominent, Amorsolo’s landscapes served as a portal to a past long since evolved. The roads might have changed and its memories long erased but Amorsolo had preserved the image as he saw it at the time, creating a specific vision that one cannot return to, so fleeting was it in the face of the rushing current of time.
\nThis 1954 Riverbank was created in what the Fernando C. Amorsolo Foundation deemed as “the peak of his popularity.” He was already and widely recognized as the most influential artist of his time with an oeuvre that speaks of his talent both in portraiture and landscape. Paintings of peasants and farmers, as well as lavanderas and dalagas, dominated the Philippine art scene and cast a wide shadow, which is evident even to this day.
\nHowever, his landscapes seem to be in another league of its own. A.R. Saulo, a prewar writer, praised his landscapes, saying, “Though Amorsolo is considered one of the country’s leading portrait painters, he believes his forte is landscape painting.” With around forty years of career under his belt, Riverbank bore the maturity of Amorsolo’s talent as he depicts the titular riverbank with a small boat docked on its shores. Amorsolo’s signature light and shadows are used magnificently in this piece; the sunlight ripples on the water's surface, bouncing on the green grass on the bank. Though the people are far too minute to be seen, the viewers can see there is a group of them, one on the boat and one on the shore, and the shadows cast by the overlooking trees are as captivating as the vibrant Filipino sunlight.
\nWhether it be in portraiture or landscape painting, Fernando Amorsolo continues to be relevant to this day. His technical prowess continues to impress, but more than that, his ability to infuse emotion and nostalgia made his landscapes timeless.
\n“Looking at an Amorsolo landscape, how can any Filipino not respond to the sight of certain specific images that instantly define his Filipino-ness: the carabao and the nipa hut, the mango tree and the bamboo grove, the haystack or mandala ng dayami, the traditional native attire of baro’t saya and balintawak,” Cid Reyes wrote in A Legacy of Landscapes. “No matter that these images are rarely or no longer seen in our contemporary life [...] they never fail to strike an emotional chord in all of us.”
\nPerhaps that is the power of an Amorsolo landscape. It transports us in a frozen snapshot of the past, letting us for just a moment participate in a life and time we can no longer experience.
","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":2400000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":2400000,"userBid":9619,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":2883840,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":56864,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/107/141/lot/8.jpg","isFeatured":1},{"id":57275,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/107/141/lot/8c.jpg","isFeatured":0},{"id":57274,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/107/141/lot/8b.jpg","isFeatured":0},{"id":57271,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/107/141/lot/8d.jpg","isFeatured":0},{"id":57270,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/107/141/lot/8a.jpg","isFeatured":0}]},"increment":[2200000,2400000,2600000,2800000,3000000,3200000,3400000,3600000,3800000,4000000,4200000,4400000,4600000,4800000,5000000,5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":7,"next":9,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}