{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":33151,"auction_id":41,"set_id":66,"lot_number":"73","artist":"Fernando Amorsolo (1892-1972)","title":"Untitled (The Filipino Family)","starting_price":5000000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1952 (lower right)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"28”x 40” (71 cm x 102 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist by M","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"The man — who created one eternal Filipino summer after another — in truth, did not have a childhood filled with sweetness and light.  Born in May 1892, he would spend his first Christmas uprooted from the family home in Paco, Manila in order to follow his father to Daet, Camarines Norte. It was a marked change from the country’s capital city and in the Philippine islands, before the turn of the century, a very poor town indeed.  At age 11, Amorsolo would be orphaned by his father. His mother, Bonifacio Cueto, would finally leave Daet after two years, probably exhausted by the hardships of raising six boys single-handedly. While in Daet, she would send Amorsolo’s drawings to her now-prosperous cousin Fabian Cueto de la Rosa. He would eventually invite them to return to Manila and stay with him.  Fabian would have a soft spot for fatherless children, having lost his own when he was a student at the Manila Academia and as a consequence, was forced to leave his beloved art school.  Fabian would 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 important tradition of being journeymen and the superb techniques that would only sharpen the brothers’ talents.  The work at hand — the most epic of the Amorsolos at the current auction — are both a personal parable as well as an authentic metaphor for the idealized family life Fernando longed for and wished for our country.  A strong, sinewy Juan de la Cruz cradles a child,a symbol of our young nation in 1952. It’s been just six years since the end of World War II and the grant of our independence. Lady Liberty is his wife, staunchly at his side. Her back is half-turned in a pose that recalls Juan Luna’s victorious tandem ‘España y Filipinas’. Three boatmen, no doubt, depicting the perseverance and discipline that we would need to make our nation bountiful, launch their craft into a rose-colored, robust future.  In the 1950s, Amorsolo would face an unexpected challenge, a new one given that he had reigned uncontested for more than two decades over the Philippine art scene. A gauntlet would be thrown down by Victorio Edades and the Neo-Realist movement headed by Hernando R. Ocampo.  Amorsolo would tirelessly champion the cause of academic art but the age of Filipino abstract art had definitely arrived.  Fernando Amorsolo would nevertheless continue to find spiritual heirs among a new generation of artists and his stature to this day remains undiminished. He would, in fact, be named the first Philippine National Artist for the Visual Arts in 1972.  This enthralling painting thus offers a third symbolism: His own optimism at the future of art and his own role in that future — as symbolized by the oar and the lantern, as the captain and inspiration that would steer it right again.   -Lisa Guerrero Nakpil","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":6000000,"bp":0.168,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":6000000,"userBid":5927,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":7008000,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":31113,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/41/66/lot/73.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":72,"next":74,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}