{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":60832,"auction_id":203,"set_id":236,"lot_number":"121","artist":"Fabian dela Rosa (1869 - 1937)","title":"Country Landscape (Riverside View of Santa Ana, Manila)","starting_price":2000000,"signed_dated":"signed (lower left)\nca.1930","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"31\" x 39\" (79 cm x 99 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Acquired directly from the artist by Arsenio and Agapita Tenmatay in the 1930s.","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"This painting by Fabian de la Rosa was said to have been commissioned by the couple Arsenio and Agapita Tenmatay, according to family tradition. Photos of it hanging in the family living room in their Don Quixote home in Sampaloc date back to at least the 1940s to 1950s. The painting can also be seen in the wedding photos of the couple’s daughter, Rosie Tenmatay, as she was about to get married to Jose A. Raquel Jr., on June 16, 1963, an information acquired from a copy of their marriage contract published by the Mormon-owned FamilySearch, which provides access to numerous family and ancestral history records.\n\nThe painting is a survivor of two ravages. First was the holocaust of World War II, in which the descendants of Rosie Tenmatay recounted that their family was one of the very few clans in Sampaloc to retain their land and preserve their property after the liberation of Manila. The painting was also fortunately salvaged when a fire broke out in the house in 1999, though it sustained significant smoke damage. The painting would soon be shipped to the United States and displayed in Arsenio and Agapita’s new home abroad.\n\nArsenio and Agapita were said to have been friends with the eminent Fabian de la Rosa. By the time De la Rosa painted this work, he had been serving for four years as the second Dean of the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts, succeeding Don Rafael Enriquez in 1926. Arsenio, on the other hand, was at the peak of his career as a business professional and a civic leader of Sampaloc, Manila.\n\nThe painting depicts what is possibly Santa Ana, Manila, then a popular vacation site or retiro for the rich and the businesspeople seeking a peaceful interlude from the hustle and bustle of Escolta and the overall hecticness of Downtown Manila. Santa Ana, during this time, offered the advantage of a relatively cooler climate, thanks to the breeze from the adjoining waters on the more serene side of the Pasig River; it was a countryside oasis of peace and solitude offering a quick, reinvigorating retreat from the city center. In the painting’s far left, a group of people, including a mother and her child, enjoy the lush fields and the mellow environment. Like many prominent people of their time, Arsenio and Agapita spent many holidays in Santa Ana, taking time off from their community and business obligations. The same can be said of the aging De la Rosa, who wanted a relief from his directorial responsibilities at the UP School of Fine Arts and to breathe the fresh country air.\n\nThe work belongs to the third and final phase of De la Rosa’s career, spanning the late 1920s through his demise in 1937. Critic Aurelio Alvero (Magtanggul Asa) describes this period in De la Rosa’s career in his article “Art in Tagala” published in 1944, writing that it “seek[s] atmosphere vibration. Unshackled by academic details, he boldly strikes a different note.  Massing and spacing stake his interest, and he leaves the play of colors to his other contemporaries. The beauty of the whole in a balance of emotiveness becomes the dominant spirit of his art...The works of this period are the works of a master treading along his path of the great.”\n\nAt the time of this painting, De la Rosa had started to suffer from the strains of old age; complications from diabetes resulted in eye cataracts and, therefore, a dimming of his vision. A similar painting is in the collection of the National Museum of Fine Arts, also painted in 1930 and featuring many elements similar to those of the work at hand. Noticeable in this work is De la Rosa's emphasis on the work's overall atmosphere rather than on design nor the intricacy of the details, as with his practice during his prime years (exemplified by his 1904 magnum opus, Planting Rice), in which focus is placed on the academic discipline of classical, painstaking drawing, and balance and harmony of all elements within the painting are at the forefront. Simplification of forms, rendered through broader, casual brushstrokes, is especially evident in the leaves of the trees and the foliage, the rocky riverbanks laden with grass, and the various natural elements on the water. Elements of classical painting are still discernible, i.e., the dark, earthy tones—the \"academic browns\" dominant in the composition's palette. However, this can also be seen as a consequence of his failing eyesight.\n\nA portion of the Pasig River can be seen in the lower right, rendered in somber colors. Together with the hazy silhouettes of likely the mountains of Rizal Province in the background, the two elements add a layer of enigma and, by extension, drama. Nevertheless, a balance between dramaticism and lightness is achieved through a subtle tension between space and form, in which a simplified pictorial structure brings more clarity to the overall composition, as De la Rosa profoundly understood that shapes and geometry are nature's building blocks.\n\nThe painting evokes and combines the earthiness of Juan Luna’s Japanese and Philippine landscapes created during his final years, the atmospheric quality of Diego Velázquez’s, and the natural drama of Rembrandt’s, as seen in the swirling dark clouds that slowly envelop the blue skies. De la Rosa, by this time, had recently seen the works of Velázquez and Rembrandt during his sojourn to Europe in 1928, on a trip sponsored by the American colonial government to showcase the “progress of art” in the Philippines. De la Rosa also synthesizes the Impressionistic skills and techniques he gained from being a student of the famous French portraitist Marcel-Andre Baschet at the Academie Julien in Paris, during his first European sojourn from 1908 to 1910 as a pensionado of Dr. Ariston Bautista Lin.\n","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":3600000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":3600000,"userBid":34,"isPaid":0,"userId":34,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":19849,"reserve_price":0,"hammer_price":4325760,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":66847,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/203/236/lot/121.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"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":120,"next":122,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}