{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":61621,"auction_id":209,"set_id":242,"lot_number":"43","artist":"Hernando R. Ocampo (1911 - 1978)","title":"Hermit","starting_price":3600000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1967 (lower right)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"28\" x 22\" (71 cm x 56 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Private collection","exhibited":null,"literature":"Hufana, Alejandrino G., ed. Pamana 13 June 1974: A Cultural Quarterly Published by the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Manila: Cultural Center of the Philippines, 1974. Listed on page 19 as “258. HERMIT” under the artist's list of paintings.
Tiongson, Nicanor G., ed. Artista ng Bayan 1991. Cultural Center of the Philippines. Manila. 1991. Listed on page 37 as \"258. Hermit\" under the artist's \"List of Paintings (Partial)\".","write_up":"H. R. Ocampo’s Iconic Visual Melody in Scarlet Turning Literature into a Crimson Cadence
In this work titled Hermit, painted in the Christmas season of 1967 and from H.R. Ocampo's artistic peak of the Visual Melody Period, the foremost neo-realist and a full-blooded man of letters seemingly hints at David De Forest Burrell's The Hermit's Christmas, an American short story published in 1912. De Forest Burrell was an American author and evangelist of the First Presbyterian Church who was a graduate of Yale University and of the Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey. Set in medieval times and written in medieval parable style, The Hermit's Christmas narrates the tale of a hermit named Theodore, described in the story as \"a gaunt, austere figure of a man in a long robe of goat's hair.\" He dwells in a cave high up on the mountains. Ocampo’s composition is dominated by burning reds and fiery oranges, with the protruding figure in the center evoking a hermit standing amid an almost-pitch-black cavern. He is shrouded in ambiguity, a phantom-like entity long isolated for years and finally emerging from the cave's dark abyss.
The story goes like this. On Christmas Day, Theodore went out of his cave, \"looking out over the wooded slopes and the shining waters at their feet,\" when a weary Crusader knight called him hoarsely for water. Theodore gave him a gourd full, which the exhausted knight drank in gulps. As Theodore invited the knight to a Christmas meal, a beggar climbed the rocky slopes and called to the hermit in a harsh voice. Theodore warmly welcomed the beggar, who informed him that several others were outside, waiting to be embraced on Christmas: a fat, wealthy merchant, a thief, a sorrowful soul, and a thinker/philosopher.
Theodore gleefully greeted the others, invited them to his cave, and, in the shared spirit of the holidays, feasted on a dish of dried goat's meat and a bowl of parched peas, served with an earthen jar of cool and sparkling water.
As they delighted in conversation, Theodore asked his guests if they considered what they had been served as Christmas joy, to which each of them answered an adamant no. Theodore then began questioning each of his guests, taking out of their innermost thoughts and souls the words that they cannot articulate, as to why they drown in melancholia and despondency on the birthday of our Lord. He bares out all their adversities: the cold-blooded slayings of the Crusader and the hatred in his heart, the greed and self-indulgence of the merchant, the thief's plunders, the melancholic soul's disillusionment and loss of faith in man and in God, the beggar's laziness and selfishness, and the thinker's abandonment of his faith and belief in God in the name of reason and intellect.
The thinker stood his ground and looked towards Theodore, agitatingly pointing out his transgressions: that he had withdrawn himself \"from the world and its snares,\" therefore succumbing to his weakness and refusing to embrace his strengths. He watched the world lose all its goodness, and, avoiding the deep calls of his conscience, did not bother to take a stand and protect his flock against the evils of the land and defend and proclaim the Gospel.
Distraught and disturbed, Theodore, who is now revealed as a monk who went into exile and seclusion, said in a weakening voice, \"I stand like you all, convicted. We are but poor Christians all. I had thought to keep my soul pure by fleeing evil; but I was wrong. I shall go back! I shall go back to serve my Lord Christ!\"
In the end, all of them went down the mountains, journeying into the world. All have realized that the true meaning of Christmas is not the fancy feast on the table; its true soul lies in warmly accepting the grace of God, living one's life with purpose and a clear conscience, and finding the willingness and joy in serving others.
Like Theodore, Ocampo was a hermit who refused to leave his country to pursue further art studies, unlike his contemporaries who were adamant to travel overseas to expose themselves to various languages of art and broaden their artistic horizons. But there is an overarching reason why Ocampo was not compelled to leave the Philippines: he was the breadwinner, working a full-time career in mass media and advertising, and there was no one to feed his large, extended family if he ever went abroad.
When Ocampo painted this work, he had been the Senior Vice-President of the advertising titan and first all-Filipino ad agency Philippine Promotions, Inc. for almost a decade. But at the back of his mind, setting aside his bureaucratic profession, Ocampo had long wanted to retire to finally pursue one thing with unbridled passion: painting.
In a May 1968 interview with critic Eric Torres for his Manila Times column \"Ways of seeing,\" Ocampo said, as articulated by Torres, that he \"would quit a profitable career in mass media as soon as he had stashed enough savings in the bank to go broke for art's sake, without fear of impoverishing his family for the next several years.\" Torres continues, \"Last month [April], he thought he had banked enough to give himself that freedom from economic problems, which serious artists dream about but only less than a handful in this country are able to realize.\"
Ocampo indeed finally retired from mass media in April 1968, just in time for his 57th birthday, jokingly but seriously saying to Torres that \"it would be wise to retire while my eyesight is still in good shape.\" Torres also noted that Ocampo's retirement could not have been more fortuitous, as the prices of his paintings had drastically increased since he was struggling to sell in the 1950s. \"The timing of Ocampo's retirement could not have been better… Whereas in the early '50s it was difficult to sell an Ocampo at P300, today Ocampos are being bought by collectors at a faster rate and at higher prices (from P1,500 to P5,000).\"
Just like Theodore the Hermit, Ocampo decided to come out of bureaucratic isolation and free himself from the burdens of his profession and agitating worries of his family drowning in depravity. His fiery interlocked forms elicit his burning passion for painting, coming together in a dreamlike trance, reigning over him in lyrical fullness. Painted in December 1967, Hermit represented to Ocampo that the best Christmas gift he could give himself was his willingness to fully commit to his art, where his soul has always lain grounded.
After his resignation, Ocampo entered the peak of his creative prowess: the Visual Melody Period of lush and highly original works that poetically evoke the tropical landscape of the Philippines and the intimacy of the Filipino socio-cultural spirit. (Adrian Maranan)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":6000000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":6000000,"userBid":5930,"isPaid":0,"userId":34,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":24848,"reserve_price":3800000,"hammer_price":7209600,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":68522,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/209/242/lot/43.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":42,"next":44,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}