{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":58387,"auction_id":121,"set_id":155,"lot_number":"23","artist":"Fernando Amorsolo (1892 - 1972)","title":"Portrait of Enrique Zóbel de Ayala","starting_price":400000,"signed_dated":"signed (lower left)\nca.1920s","medium":"pen and ink on paper","size":"15” x 10 1/2” (38 cm x 27 cm)","property":"PROPERTY OF A DISTINGUISHED LADY","coa":null,"provenance":null,"exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"The Prodigy Amorsolo Captures Don Enrique Zóbel de Ayala by LISA GUERRERO NAKPIL <br /><br />At age 16, Amorsolo would begin that inexorable climb that would make him the most famous artist of his time. He would win the first of his accolades, a contest organized by the an influential organization called the Asociacion Internacional de Artistas de Manila, for an exposition for the fine arts in 1908. <br /><br />The following year, he would enter the School of Fine Arts of the University of the Philippines, where his uncle was also a professor. Amorsolo would be among the first six graduates to complete the then-five year course. Upon graduating, he would do well enough in a competitive examination to be recruited as a teacher in Elementary Drawing. <br /><br />He would work at the publishing firm of Cacho Hermanos where Jorge Pineda reigned supreme as the remarkable illustrator of the Renacimiento. <br /><br />It was at Cacho Hermanos where Amorsolo would first cut his teeth, under the watchful eye of Pineda, who he would eventually eclipse in commercial success. <br /><br />In this engraving, probably intended as one of the Renacimiento’s profile pieces or cover art, Don Enrique Zóbel de Ayala is shown, natty in a business suit, walking jauntily along carrying briefcases overflowing with corporate papers naming the burgeoning Zóbel holdings. These included Filipinas Compañia de Seguros, the country’s first Filipino fire-insurance company, which was co-founded by him alongside his brother Fernando and his brother-in-law Don Antonio Melian, Conde de Perecamps. There is also Hogar Filipino, also founded with the Count, San Miguel Brewery, and of course, Ayala y Compañia. <br /><br />It would be through works such as this that he would attract the attention of the industrialist Don Enrique whose concerns among others also included the distillery Ginebra San Miguel. He would commission Amorsolo to design the label of the avenging archangel slaying the devil-serpent that is still used to this day. <br /><br />In 1919, Zóbel de Ayala would bankroll his education in Spain in the vey same academy, the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, where all the Filipino greats had gone from Luna and Resurreccion Hidalgo. Scholar Ramon N. Villegas once noted that Amorsolo’s test results were so excellent that he was invited to join the academy not as a student but as an instructor. <br /><br />Amorsolo would say in later years that — thanks to Don Enrique’s patronage — it was in Madrid that his art became what it was always destined to become, basking in the dramatic draughtsmanship of Diego Velasquez and the impressionistic light of Joaquin Sorolla (1863 - 1923).","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":600000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":600000,"userBid":null,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":0,"hammer_price":720960,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":63645,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/121/155/lot/23.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[450000,500000,550000,600000,650000,700000,750000,800000,900000,1000000,1100000,1200000,1300000,1400000,1500000,1600000,1700000,1800000,1900000,2000000,2200000,2400000,2600000,2800000,3000000,3200000,3400000,3600000,3800000,4000000,4200000,4400000,4600000,4800000,5000000,5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":22,"next":24,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}