{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":3583,"auction_id":6,"set_id":8,"lot_number":"179","artist":"Fernando Amorsolo (1892 - 1972)","title":"Portrait of a Spanish Woman","starting_price":5000000,"signed_dated":"signed and inscribed Madrid (upper right);<br /> dated 1919 (verso)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"21 1/2\" x 16 1/2\" (55 cm x 42 cm)","property":"PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE COLLECTION","coa":"León Gallery wishes to thank Sylvia Amorsolo-Lazo for confirming the authenticity of this lot.","provenance":null,"exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"In 1919, a twenty-seven-year-old Fernando Amorsolo sailed to Spain under the auspices of Don Enrique Zóbel, who had offered him a grant to study abroad. Just a year prior, Amorsolo had been promoted from instructor in Elementary drawing to instructor in painting in his alma mater, the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts, where he had graduated in 1914.<br /><br />Don Enrique Zóbel was particularly fond of the young Amorsolo and his works. As quoted by Alfredo Roces in his seminal monograph on Amorsolo, Don Enrique elucidated in the following words his high praises for the young artist: \"I know your work quite well…and I appreciate very much what you are doing for art in this country.\" Don Enrique remarks. \"But I think you need to study more. You must go to Europe, study there, and visit the art galleries of the world. It will help improve your art.\" <br /><br />When Amorsolo left for Spain, Don Enrique provided him with an additional monthly pension of 200 pesos, a portion of which he gave to his wife, Salud, and their child, in Manila.<br /><br /> Upon his arrival in the Iberian Peninsula, Amorsolo settled in Madrid and immediately started his studies at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, the same prestigious institution where Luna, Hidalgo, and Amorsolo's uncle, Fabian de la Rosa, studied.<br /><br /> In his leisure time, Amorsolo had the opportunity to visit the Prado Museum, where he, as Roces puts it, \"obtained permission to make a copy of [Francisco] Goya's \"Maja Desnuda\" and [Diego] Velazquez's portrait of \"Don Fernando de Austria.\" This he had done in fulfillment of his patron, Don Enrique's wishes and conditions.<br /><br /> Roces succinctly narrates that Amorsolo \"seemed to have had little time for the bohemian frolics of artists in Europe at the time, prodigiously sketching and painting instead.\"<br /><br /> Despite his limited finances, Amorsolo produced many of his best works during this period, including El Violinista (1919), from the collection of Don Luis Araneta, and the work at hand, 1919's Portrait of a Spanish Woman.<br /><br />  In Portrait of a Spanish Woman, from Amorsolo's brief yet prolific seven-month Spanish sojourn, one can see heavy influences of his luminary Velazquez: the sitter's highly individualistic attribute, the naturalism of the overall composition, and the trademark chiaroscuro, of which Velazquez was a virtuoso and one that Amorsolo would become revered for throughout his career.<br /><br />In the March 6, 1920 issue of the newspaper Manila Nueva, Amorsolo reveals that Velazquez is, in his own words, \"indisputably number one\" in his list of highly regarded artists whose magnum opuses he saw at the Prado.<br /><br /> Amorsolo first encountered Velazquez's works while still a UP student. Its director then, Rafael Enriquez, was described by Amorsolo's friend Dominador Castañeda in his 1972 book Art in the Philippines as someone \"whose forte was to lecture on the thoroughness of Velazquez's manner of painting and the vividness of his colors.\" <br /><br /> \"Amorsolo experimented with Velazquez's use of delicate grays in his pigments,\" says Castañeda in the same monograph. \"And also attracted by the bright colors of Monet and other impressionists, like Sorolla and Renoir, he used these bright colors but toning them down with the delicate grays of Velazquez…Thus, the Amorsolo color was born.\"<br /><br />  Portrait of a Spanish Woman is a testament to Amorsolo's fertile mind and perseverance in fine-tuning his craft. It is a tangible heralding of the artist's penetrating influence in the decades to come. (A.M.)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":5000000,"bp":0.168,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":5000000,"userBid":5930,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":5840000,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":3881,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/6/8/lot/179.jpg","isFeatured":1},{"id":3879,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/6/8/lot/179a.jpg","isFeatured":0}]},"increment":[5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":178,"next":180,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}