{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":59728,"auction_id":186,"set_id":220,"lot_number":"13","artist":"Fernando Amorsolo (1892 - 1972)","title":"Site of U.P. Diliman","starting_price":3600000,"signed_dated":"signed, dated and inscribed \"UP Site Feb 1947\" (lower right)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"18\" x 24\" (46 cm x 61 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Private collection, USA","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"Prior to the university’s official transfer to Diliman in 1949, officials of the University of the Philippines (UP) had been in deep talks about relocating the university out of Ermita, Manila. The city’s rapid urbanization led to a rise in the population from 1903 to 1939. Paired with the university’s population increase, the UP Board of Regents was in desperate need of solutions. \n\nRelocating UP to a less urbanized site was an issue to ponder from early on. Thoughts of resettlement were envisioned as early as 1916 with the revised Burnham plan in the talks of a possible new campus of the “heights behind Manila.” In 1922, UP President Guy Potter Benton proposed a 100-hectare site in San Juan, Rizal, though the plan did not come to fruition. \n\nPlanning for UP’s relocation picked up speed during the Commonwealth era. Former Senate President Manuel Quezon became the Commonwealth’s president in 1935, and with him came reinvigorated resettlement talks. His initial plans included moving the campus to Tagaytay, a town some sixty kilometers from Manila. Though this plan failed, he continued to insist on the transfer of the university, holding a meeting with his cabinet and UP officials regarding his plans in August 1937. \n\nParticipants of this meeting enumerated possible locations for the new campus: Baguio, Los Baños, Alabang, Tagaytay, Novaliches, and Marikina. By December of the same year, Quezon created the Committee of Education Policy, a committee tasked to study UP’s relocation. By 1939, the committee had submitted its report to the Board of Regents, favoring the Marikina site, just east of the Diliman estate and about ten kilometers from central Manila. Thus, Quezon seemed hellbent on making this dream of UP’s relocation true. \n\nNeedless to say, Quezon’s Diliman dreams came to a halt, with the Second World War entering the Pacific Hemisphere in the years leading up to the 1940s. \n\nDuring the destructive war, the UP Ermita site was among the most destroyed buildings, making relocation a postwar expedient. When the Oblation statue was transferred to Diliman in February 1949, it signalled the official and full relocation of UP. \n\nTwo years before UP’s official resettlement, Fernando Amorsolo’s Site of U.P. Diliman captured the still-pastoral view of the land. Amorsolo had been an instructor at the UP School of Fine Arts since 1914; by 1938, he had replaced his uncle Fabian de la Rosa as Director of the college. \n\nDiliman then was a vast expanse of green grass and greener trees. From a distance, one can see a series of mountain ranges, with the white clouds covering the blue skies. One of Quezon’s primary requirements for a new UP campus is a more pastoral space. According to him, Manila has become a raucous place, with the students too embroiled in socio-political activities; he was “tired of seeing the U.P. students making demonstrations or approving resolutions on public or political questions,” as he had said in a 1938 meeting with the student council. \n\nAs such, Diliman became the perfect remedy to insulate students from radicalism and to reduce the political noise in Manila. This self-contained campus is meant to isolate radicalism and create a truly academic space devoid of unnecessary disturbances to the scholastic tranquility. It is isolated from the vulgar world of Philippine politics. \n\nThough the years would prove that this supposed insulation would not work, the pastoral landscape of Diliman still remains. It is an oasis of green in an otherwise concrete jungle. \n\nFernando Amorsolo’s Site of U.P. Diliman is a glimpse of the self-sustained campus before it was as it is known today. “The paintings of Fernando C. Amorsolo overflow with sweetness and optimism,” art historian Eric Torres said, and indeed, this work is proof of Amorsolo’s tenacity throughout history. His genre paintings are imbued with a luminous and romantic portrayal of the Philippines; the characteristic glow of his canvas is almost a portal that brings its viewers to the past. (Hannah Valiente)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":4000000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":4000000,"userBid":34,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":14800,"reserve_price":0,"hammer_price":4806400,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":65223,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/186/220/lot/13.jpg","isFeatured":1},{"id":65393,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/186/220/lot/13c.jpg","isFeatured":0},{"id":65392,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/186/220/lot/13b.jpg","isFeatured":0},{"id":65391,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/186/220/lot/13a.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":12,"next":14,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}