{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":59782,"auction_id":186,"set_id":220,"lot_number":"67","artist":"Anita Magsaysay-Ho (1914 - 2012)","title":"Barrio Scene","starting_price":3000000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1948 (lower left)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"16\" x 24\" (41 cm x 61 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Acquired directly from the artist by Paul H. Wood, President of the  International Harvest Company, sometime in the late 1940s to 1950s","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"Anita Magsaysay-Ho, in the late 1940s, was an artist at the crossroads of creative metamorphosis and personal change. Initially starting as a painter captured by the penetrating influence of Fernando Amorsolo, who was one of her mentors during her days at the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts in the early 1930s, Anita soon came under the spell of modernism when she entered the School of Design established by Victorio Edades and eminent modernist architects Angel and Juan Nakpil, and Enrique Ruiz, among others along Isaac Peral Street (now United Nations Avenue). \n\nIn her memoirs, Anita described the School of Design as \"a new school with a progressive outlook on art.\" Anita cherished her memories of her stay at this school, describing it as \"filled with laughter, joy, and happiness.\" \"All the students were my friends—Mercedes Nakpil Zialcita, Alice Escaler Gana, Margot Fragante, Norma Jacinto Carlos,\" she added. \"Just imagine meeting your friends every day at school.\" \n\nIn fact, Anita, along with her friend and classmate Consuelo Lee, had the privilege of assisting Edades on a fresco mural—the first in the country—depicting the triumph of science and medicine for the Quezon Institute, a hospital for tuberculosis patients. Unfortunately, the fresco was destroyed in World War II. \n\n\"Mr. Edades was a very inspiring teacher,\" Anita said in her memoirs. \"He taught history very well and enlightened us on Cezanne and the [Post-]Impressionists. From him, I learned how to use colors in a modern way.\" Anita also added that she \"really enjoyed and learned a lot from [Edades'] lectures.\" In 1947, Anita encountered what would become her greatest legacy to Philippine art: the unforgiving yet magically luminous art of egg tempera painting, which she learned during her studies at Michigan's Cranbrook Academy of Art under the tutelage of the Hungarian artist and the school's then-director, Zoltan Sepeshy. A year before entering Cranbrook, Anita studied at the Art Students' League of New York, enrolling in courses such as portraiture, woodcuts, and oil painting, which was helmed by the American painter and printmaker Kenneth Hayes Miller. \n\nIt was also in the late 1940s that Anita fell in love with a Chinese man named Robert Ho, heir to the shipping fortune of one of Shanghai's most prominent industrialist families. Anita met Robert at a coffee party at the Riverside Church’s tower, just across from International House, where she resided in New York. Anita recalled Robert coming up to her, reading her name tag, and saying, “My goodness, you certainly have a long name.” To which the slightly offended Anita replied, “And your name is too short. Ho.” This somewhat tense encounter between the two would blossom into breakfast and dinner dates at the International House’s cafeteria (Anita loved Robert’s intelligence in business and philosophy and him being a Catholic, which was rare for a Chinese). After a brief period of long-distance romance only tempered through snail mails, Anita and Robert would later marry at St. Viviana's Cathedral in Los Angeles on November 22, 1947, in a simple wedding ceremony attended by only a few, including Anita's father, Ambrosio, and her sister, Emma. \n\nThe newlywed couple moved to Washington, D.C. in mid-winter of 1948, settling in a two-story brick home on Wisconsin Avenue. Anita wrote of this episode in her memoirs, \"Our first home was a two-story brick house on Wisconsin Avenue. The house was charming and homely, with three bedrooms and a bath upstairs. I enjoyed keeping house. I was glad Mama taught her daughters how to cook.\" \n\nBarrio Scene, a memento of Anita's transitional life period \n\nIt was in their Washington, D.C. home where Anita created this 1948 painting depicting a Philippine barrio. The work was one of the very few paintings Anita produced during this transitional period in her personal life, as she admitted in her memoirs that she \"had no time for painting\" due to her responsibilities as a full-time housewife. Since Barrio Scene was painted by the then-newlywed Anita, this piece would become one of her first works signed with the iconic \"Anita Magsaysay-Ho.\"\n\nThe work echoes Amorsolo's genre influence on the young Anita, briefly returning to the classic medium of oil. The subject may have been likely inspired by Anita's childhood summer vacations in her father's hometown of Zambales, where she had fond memories of the rural folk in their everyday endeavors, bonded by strong communal values. \n\nHowever, the composition is decisively influenced by Anita's time at the School of Design, where she came under the tutelage of the Filipino modernist patriarch Edades, who, in turn, was strongly influenced by Paul Cezanne. Anita's Barrio Scene possesses a roughness marked by solid figures rendered in strong, exploratory brushwork, achieved by applying small yet thick patches of varying colors to emphasize their forms. Anita relied on heavy color gradations to achieve depth and dimension. The dominant blues give the work an airy, atmospheric quality, while the rhythmic strokes endow it with earthiness, thus engendering balance in the composition. \n\nAnita's learnings at the School of Design resonate in her practice, applying Cezanne's principle of focusing on nature's essential forms (the \"cone, sphere, and cylinder\" concept) rather than concentrating on the complexity of their structure. In turn, Anita shared with the Post Impressionists the principle of structure over impression, the permanent over the fleeting. As an artist with a profound love for her motherland (she once wrote during the war a melancholic poem exalting her country's \"beauteous, fertile countryside\" and shores of clean, white sand\") and who grew up in the company of the rural community, Barrio Scene echoes Anita's genuine admiration and empathy for the ordinary, relying on her cherished childhood recollections of these people, thus immortalizing them rather than painting them as mere ephemeral impressions of the mind. Anita, thousands of miles away from her homeland, facing a new chapter as a married woman, and likely experiencing a melancholic and nostalgic homesickness, culled the depths of her memories and went back to the balmy summers of her youth. The result is a dreamlike work depicting a fantasy rooted in her own lived reality, with the pulsating impastos capturing a dynamic moment seemingly frozen in time. \n\nAs Anita wrote in her memoirs, “These scenes of my childhood are so vivid in my mind; women pounding rice, winding our way back to town in the dusk after the picnic, the oil lamp lit windows of the nipa houses sparkling like f ireflies in the dark. Had I never holidayed in Zambales, I do not think I would have the depth of impressions, which I subconsciously draw upon with so much fondness and passion when I paint.” \n\nAcquired by an influential American businessman \n\nBarrio Scene was acquired from Anita by Paul H. Wood, former president of the wholly owned Philippine subsidiary of the International Harvest Company (IH), an American manufacturer of agricultural equipment, machinery, and tractors. Based in Manila, the IH Philippines once operated a large assembly plant that assembled motor trucks, tractors, and farm implements from component parts imported into the country. The company also had an assembly plant in Cebu, as well as parts depots, offices, and service stations in Bacolod and Davao. Before the war, the IH Philippines was one of the major exporters of abaca and had introduced mechanized farming into the country, primarily in the rice-producing fields of Central Luzon, the sugar-rich plantations of Negros, and the abaca-yielding provinces of Bicol. \n\nBefore becoming president, Wood served as Assistant Manager of the IH's Motor Truck Department, in the company's Foreign Operations division, traveling extensively throughout Europe, the Middle East, India, and Southeast Asia. During World War II, Wood served in the US Army for four years as a major and lieutenant colonel in an Armored Division (Interestingly, the IH was also responsible for manufacturing several pieces of machinery for the US army during the war, most notably Mark 13 torpedoes that were primarily responsible for the sinking of the Yamamoto, Japan's most powerful battleship.). As lieutenant colonel, Wood commanded the “Harvester’s Battalion,” composed of enlisted men who were employed by or affiliated with the IH. \n\nAfter the war, Wood settled in the Philippines and was responsible for reorganizing the IH's pre-war company structure and organization. \n\nWood became president of the highly influential American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines in 1950, while simultaneously serving as Vice President of the IH Philippines. After his term, Wood assumed post as one of the members of the Chamber's Board. He would also become a councilor of the Chamber's Foreign and Domestic Trade Controls Committee, attending hearings held by the Philippine Congress on matters and bills related to US Philippine trade relations and trade controls. One of the most notable hearings that Wood attended was the one centering on the Retail Trade Nationalization Bill, which aimed to protect Filipino retailers. The bill would be signed into law by President Ramon Magsaysay on June 19, 1954. \n\nWith his vested interests in Philippine business and enterprise, Wood would rub elbows and befriend powerful f igures in the Philippine government, most notably Magsaysay, who became president from 1953 to 1957, during Wood's tenure as a board member of the Chamber and councilor in one of its committees. At this time, Wood had already become President and General Manager of the IH Philippines, and it was also possibly around this period that Wood met Anita, who was, of course, President Magsaysay’s cousin. Likely drawn to and enamored with the piece's quaint, rustic charm, Wood purchased the painting directly from Anita. Wood very much cherished this painting, even bringing it with him when he left the Philippines sometime in 1963 to settle permanently in Florida.","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":5500000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":5500000,"userBid":34,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":15125,"reserve_price":0,"hammer_price":6608800,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":65277,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/186/220/lot/67.jpg","isFeatured":1},{"id":65510,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/186/220/lot/67b.jpg","isFeatured":0},{"id":65509,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/186/220/lot/67a.jpg","isFeatured":0}]},"increment":[5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":66,"next":68,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}