{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":26792,"auction_id":33,"set_id":54,"lot_number":"45","artist":"Fernando Amorsolo (1892 - 1972)","title":"Portrait of Sra. Doña Marcela Meer Millar","starting_price":140000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1956 (right)","medium":"oil and canvas","size":"24” x 22” (61 cm x 56 cm)","property":null,"coa":"Leon Gallery wishes to thank Mrs. Sylvia Amorsolo-Lazo for confirming the authenticity of this lot","provenance":null,"exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"The maestro Fernando Amorsolo y Cueto would be primarily raised and molded by his mother, Bonifacia Cueto. His father Pedro, a bookkeeper, would pass away when he was only 11. At any rate, it was on his mother’s side where artistic talent ran: her first cousin was the renowned Fabián de la Rosa y Cueto. His affinity with his mother would give him the insight to create the various female avatars in his personal pantheon of Filipinas. <br /><br /> Bonifacia would supposedly send her cousin the young Fernando’s drawings. Fabián would eventually take his nephews—chiefly Fernando and his brother Pablo—under his wing, making them first his manchadors, and then his able apprentices. (Fernando would thus formally begin under De la Rosa’s tutelage at just 13.) It was from him that the Amorsolo siblings would learn the storied tradition of being journeymen and the superb techniques that would only sharpen the brothers’ talents.  <br /><br />He would be among the first six graduates to complete the five-year course in the arts at the University of the Philippines where his uncle Fabián was also a professor at the time. <br /><br /> In 1919, the industrialist Enrique Zobel de Ayala would send him to Spain on a grant in the very same academy, the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, where all the Filipino greats had gone, from Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo to Juan Luna.  <br /><br />No doubt, Amorsolo would have haunted the halls of the Prado, Spain’s national art museum in Madrid where he would have soaked in the work of such greats as Titian and the baroque master Peter Paul Rubens. (Rubens’ The Judgement of Paris is one of the magnificent paintings in its collection.) He is said to have been such a quick study that his teachers believed he was more qualified to be a fellow instructor than a mere student. <br /><br /> Amorsolo would return to the Philippines the following year and go from strength to strength, attracting influential patrons and important commissions. <br /><br /> By 1956, the year that this portrait of a Rubenesque matriarch was painted, Fernando Amorsolo was at the apex of his powers as a sought-after portraitist. Like Rubens, who immortalized Marie de Medici, second wife of Henry IV of France, Amorsolo was also famous for rendering the reigning matriarchs of Manila. <br /><br /> In this extraordinary work at hand, Amorsolo captures the gentle and generous spirit of the sitter. La Sra. Doña wears a filmy silk formal dress in gold, adorned with a restrained necklace of pearls and subtle diamond earrings. A half-smile plays on her face. <br /><br /> The angle and expression is reminiscent of another famous Rubens work, Venus at the Mirror, which shows the Goddess of Beauty in full-figured splendor. In the hands of a true master, the subtle revelation of character is as important as the capturing of the visible.","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":190000,"bp":0.168,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":190000,"userBid":5961,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":221920,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":24222,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/33/54/lot/45.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[70000,80000,90000,100000,110000,120000,130000,140000,150000,160000,170000,180000,190000,200000,220000,240000,260000,280000,300000,320000,340000,360000,380000,400000,450000,500000,550000,600000,650000,700000,750000,800000,900000,1000000,1100000,1200000,1300000,1400000,1500000,1600000,1700000,1800000,1900000,2000000,2200000,2400000,2600000,2800000,3000000,3200000,3400000,3600000,3800000,4000000,4200000,4400000,4600000,4800000,5000000,5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":44,"next":46,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}