{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":14624,"auction_id":14,"set_id":26,"lot_number":"31","artist":"Fernando Amorsolo (1892 - 1972)","title":"A Typical Filipina Beauty","starting_price":4000000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated Manila, 1926 (lower left)","medium":"oil on wood","size":"14\" x 10\" (36 cm x 25 cm)","property":null,"coa":"Accompanied by a certificate issued by Ms. Sylvia Amorsolo Lazo\nconfirming the authenticity of this lot","provenance":"Private Collection, USA \nCynthia Colpitts, from Durham, North Carolina, inherited the two\nAmorsolos from her father, Clayton Leonard Seitz who was the vice\npresident for Cornelius Vandrebilt Starr and Co Insurance in the\nPhilippines. They were incarcerated in the Sto. Tomas Camp in Manila\nfor 3 years, where Cynthia was born. Her mom was pregnant when\nthey entered the camp. To her recollection her dad got the paintings\nfrom Amorsolo before the war in Manila.","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"Fernando Amorsolo would be dubbed as “one of the most important artists in Philippine art history by the collector and scholar Ramon N. Villegas. Writing in a monograph published by León Gallery, Villegas would say that “Amorsolo was an exceptional portraitist and was best known for rural landscapes. He was the first Filipino to be declared National Artist for the Visual Arts.”
His golden age was no doubt, noted Villegas,“the two decades between the 1920s and the 1930s.”
The stunning “Dalagang Bukid (The Country Girl)” is one of the earliest of a favorite theme that epitomized Amorsolo’s zenith of Filipina beauty. The farm lass’ skin is the color of burnished copper, with expressive eyes averted coyly from the viewer. A slight smile plays on her lips. Her raven hair is covered with a traditional scarf whose colors echo the umbers and greens of the Philippine countryside. In contrast, her sheer blouse and sleeves are hand painted with delicate strokes. She appears to be sheathed by light, surrounded by a bamboo glen.
Villegas’ biography reveals that “when Amorsolo’s father died young, the family stayed with his mother’s cousin, the master painter Fabián de la Rosa, The young Fernando took care of de la Rosa’s fencing foils and cleaned his paint brushes. He helped his mother make ends meet by selling water color postcards to a local bookstore for ten centavos each.”
But before that, the family had followed his father’s fortunes to Bicol, where he stayed till he was 10 or 11 years old, enough time to steep himself in the rhythms, sights and colors of the Filipino countryside.
While studying at the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts, Villegas would note, the young Amorsolo would support himself by doing illustrations. Records would show that he would do “a lot of graphic and commercial design, covers of children’s textbooks, novels, cartoons and illustrations pulp novels and for serious political, as well as satirical publications. He even designed the label for Ginebra San Miguel.”
\"The latter job was propitious,” adds Villegas, “for he caught the eye of the owner Don Enrique Zóbel, a leading businessman and a patron of the arts. He was so impressed that he offered to send Amorsolo to the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid for further studies, with a generous stipend. The artist took the standard entrance exam at the Academia. To Amorsolo’s surprise, after evaluating his work, the school informed him that they would accept him, not as a student but as a professor at the school.”
“Amorsolo spent seven months in Madrid, and travelled the country. He visited art galleries and museums to study the works of Diego Velasquez, El Greco, Goya, Monet, Manet, Van Dyck, and Ignacio Zuloaga. Amorsolo was to emulate John Singer Sargent and Anders Zorn for their portraiture. It was from Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863–1923), the Valenciano painter known for his paintings of people and landscapes under the bright Spanish sunlight that Amorsolo learned most.”
“He built upon Sorolla’s technique of utilizing the sun to draw out the most dramatic effects from the heightened sunlit colors and dramatic contrasts between light and shade. Mastery of this technique would set Amorsolo apart from his Filipino contemporaries,” says Villegas.
“Amorsolo painted prodigiously during the 1920s and the 1930s. His \"Rice Planting\" (1922) became one of the most popular images of the time. By the 1930s, Amorsolo's works were exhibited widely both in the Philippines and abroad.”
“His brightly lit, bucolic pastoral images set the tone for Philippine painting for most of the 20th century.
“In his lifetime, Amorsolo’s work was sought by local and expatriate collectors, because his paintings represented the best and most memorable aspects of Philippine life.”","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":"
Fernando Amorsolo (1892 - 1972) A Typical Filipina Beauty signed and dated Manila, 1926 (lower left) oil on wood 14\" x 10\" (36 cm x 25 cm)