{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":39444,"auction_id":58,"set_id":86,"lot_number":"50","artist":"Fernando Amorsolo (1892-1972)","title":"Portrait of J. Antonio Araneta","starting_price":200000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1952 (lower right)","medium":null,"size":"38” x 28” (97 cm x 71 cm)","property":"Property from the J. Antonio Araneta Collection","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 subject of this stately painting is the legal luminary Don J. Antonio Araneta, brother of the most legendary art collector  of the last century, Don Luis Araneta.  His relaxed, yet authoritative gaze, and well delineated facial features add to the vitality  of the painting.\nJ. Antonio Araneta’s public persona was shaped by his distinguished career as a lawyer, having followed the footsteps of his  father — lawyer, businessman, nationalist and patriot Gregorio Soriano Araneta — in establishing a notable career in law.\nAmorsolo’s stately, yet non-provocative choice of colors are in step with J. Antonio Araneta’s sterling reputation of being  uncompromising in his dealings as a lawyer; a firmness with which he always stood for what he believed in. \nA pale red flower pinned on his lapel is enough visual flourish to break the stately sea of gray which defines the subject’s suit.  In a similar vein, even in his legal writings, J. Antonio Araneta had “a preference for lucidity and a disdain for literary flourish  that oftentimes beclouds the thought that one intends to impart” in his legal writings, according to the book “1030  R. HIDALGO.” \nIt comes as a pleasant surprise that, beyond this reputation of straightforwardness and uncompromising firmness in the legal practice, J. Antonio Araneta is a complete and diverse art connoisseur, second only to his brother Luis. \nHis enthusiasm for art has been nourished by his growing up years in the family’s prewar ancestral house at 1030 R. Hidalgo  in prewar Quiapo (for which the book was named) where his parents, Don Gregorio Araneta and Doña Carmen Zaragoza lived.\nAmorsolo was a master of sleekly rendered surfaces.  His portraiture shows as much psychological depth, and his feel for flesh and fabric was superb, he understood how to stage a portrait dramatically, and this work encapsulates the aura of a more  genteel era.\nWhether it’s the cheeky smiles of peasants in his genre scenes, or the prestige of Manila’s ruling class in his portraits, Amorsolo’s primary subject is the human presence, and he certainly intended many of his canvases to be taken as exercises in portraiture. \nBack in, say the sixties or seventies, Amorsolo’s portraits were perhaps too close to life to be properly appraised in their time,  but fifteen years after the new millennium, today’s audiences are equipped with that all important aesthetic distance to  recognize their aesthetic significance. \nAfter abstraction, conceptualism, performance art, and installations, today’s audiences are rediscovering the primal power of the portrait — specially the period portraits done by Amorsolo. \nFernando Amorsolo, an immensely gifted draftsman and a bravura painter who had absorbed lessons of many periods, has emerged as the most celebrated portraitist of the 20th century. \nPhilippine art has not been immune to the currents of international modernism, but classically trained artists like Amorsolo have never submitted to them easily.\nThe dominant art movements of the twentieth century have not given much encouragement to the art of portraiture, but  Amorsolo was obviously unfazed by these forces at work.","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":"<p><strong>Fernando Amorsolo</strong> (1892-1972)<br /><em>Portrait of J. Antonio Araneta</em><br />signed and dated 1952 (lower right)<br />oil on canvas<br />38&rdquo; x 28&rdquo; (97 cm x 71 cm)</p>","alias":null,"hp":400000,"bp":0.168,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":400000,"userBid":null,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":467200,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":37726,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/58/86/lot/50.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[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":49,"next":51,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}