{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":61668,"auction_id":209,"set_id":242,"lot_number":"90","artist":"Anita Magsaysay-Ho (1914 - 2012)","title":"a.) Young Girl Bathing (front) b.)  Portrait of Bernardino Ramos Hernandez, Jr.  (back)","starting_price":2000000,"signed_dated":"a.) ca.1943-1944 <br>\noil on canvas<br>\n33\" x 23\" (84 cm x 58 cm)<br><br>","medium":"b.) ca. 1944 - 1945<br>\n33\" x 23\" (84 cm x 58 cm)","size":"","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":null,"exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"Anita Magsaysay-Ho's practice of painting back-toback on a single canvas or board began during the war years, when scarcity became the \"new normal\" and survival became a daily necessity. These works, painted between 1943 and 1945, towards the climax of the Second World War, were created by Anita in their family residence on Villaruel Street in Pasay, a few blocks away from the Church of Our Lady of Sorrows along F.B. Harrison Street.<br/><br/>Young Girl Bathing was painted sometime between 1943 and 1944, before Anita and her family made that great escape to the mountainous landscape of Montalban, Rizal, taking refuge in the house of a family friend, Dr. Cueto, in the early months of 1944. The Magsaysay family evacuated to Montalban when news of the impending return of the American forces under General MacArthur and the imminent battle for Manila's liberation spread like wildfire across the city. In Montalban, Anita continued painting, albeit on recycled boards as materials were scarce, and created palette-knife landscapes and scenes of everyday wartime life.<br/><br/>Young Girl Bathing is an innocent portrait of a young girl being bathed in a batya (a traditional Filipino tub) by what appears to be her mother. The composition is rustic and dominated by an earthy palette, echoing Botong Francisco's Gauguin-inspired early works and carrying a post-impressionistic flair. The composition shows Anita's early modernist inclinations, which she acquired during her time in 1937 at the School of Design (Atelier of Modern Art) under the modernist patriarch, Victorio Edades. There, Anita discovered the styles and techniques of Paul Cezanne, Pierre-August Renoir, Paul Gauguin, and Henri Matisse, among others.<br/><br/>Anita recalled in her memoirs that when food became expensive in Montalban, her family returned to their Pasay home toward the end of that same year. She recalled learning from her father Don Ambrosio (who visited them once in a while in Montalban due to his responsibilities as General Manager of the Metropolitan Water District) of their houseboy taking good care of their garden and growing a multitude of \"vegetables, eggplants, tomatoes, beans, squashes, and camote.\" Because of their abundant supply of homegrown food, Anita's mother, Doña Amalia Corpus, told her family that it was time to \"go home.\"<br/><br/>Back at their Pasay home, Anita reunited with her remaining oil paints, brushes, and canvases. It was likely during this time that she painted, at the very back of the first work, a portrait of the young and handsome Bernardino Ramos Hernandez, Jr. as a guerrilla soldier, around 18 to 19 years of age.<br/><br/>In a correspondence with León Gallery, Natividad \"Natty\" Hernandez-McKernan, Bernardino's daughter, said that Anita, whose Corpus side of her family were close friends to the Hernandezes, was \"thrilled that my father had joined the guerrilla movement\" (the young Anita seemingly had a \"happy crush\" on the dashing Bernardino). The Hernandezes lived at San Juan Street in Pasay, near the Magsaysay residence at Villaruel Street.<br/><br/>The painting of a young girl, paired with Bernardino's portrait, may have reminded young Anita of that valiant act of serving and fighting for the nation; she even praised in her 1944 poem the \"brave youth that struggle,\" exalting these warriors of the motherland in their resolute endeavors for an invigorating return to pleasant, peaceful times, further emphasized by the warmth and solace exuded by the earthy tones.<br/><br/> Interestingly, Anita's cousin, future President Ramon Magsaysay, founded and led the Western Luzon Guerrilla Forces, which operated in Central Luzon and organized a formidable army of 10,000 men by January 1945.<br/><br/> This two-sided painting is the only known work on canvas Anita created during the war, as she mainly painted on wooden boards during this period.<br/><br/>The works also evoke Anita's memories of the last months of the Pacific War. In her memoirs, she shared that she and her family were elated when news of MacArthur's landing in Leyte (October 1944) reached them. But this joy proved short-lived when another report reached them: the Japanese plans to set the city ablaze as one of their final chances at defense.<br/><br/>\"News reached us that American tanks were already in Pasay. Our good neighbors, the Alfonsos, advised us to go and leave our home as they learned that the Japanese had planned to burn our area that night. We brought as many valuables as we could carry. We set off for the house of a friend called Dr. Veloso who was on Dominga Street. We locked up our house and walked carefully through a mined road, towards Libertad Street until we reached the house of the good doctor.\"<br/><br/>\"That night,\" Anita continued, \"we could see the fires burning in Pasay and turning the sky red in the vicinity of our Villaruel home.\" Luckily, the Magsaysays' house was spared, leaving this painting intact, a cultural survivor in the midst of the ruins and rubble of the city. (Adrian Maranan)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":3000000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":3000000,"userBid":34,"isPaid":0,"userId":34,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":25175,"reserve_price":0,"hammer_price":3604800,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":68567,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/209/242/lot/90.jpg","isFeatured":1},{"id":68839,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/209/242/lot/90a.jpg","isFeatured":0},{"id":68838,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/209/242/lot/90b.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":89,"next":91,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}