{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":39991,"auction_id":61,"set_id":89,"lot_number":"87","artist":"Fernando Amorsolo (1892-1972)","title":"Portrait of Chona at 21","starting_price":1200000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1943 (lower right)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"47 1/2” x 33 1/2” (121 cm x 85 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":"Amorsolo completed a number of privately commissioned portraits.  Art audiences through the decades may point out the  contrast between Amorsolo's “public style“ of painting, as shown in his landscapes, or genre, and his “private style,“ as shown  in his distinctive portraits.\nNot content with showing merely the elegance of the subject, Amorsolo has produced a magnificent study of character.\n \nChona Recto Ysmael, even at a young age, makes for a substantial presence — the refined, aristocratic female figure situated  in understated surroundings, a vision quite different from that of the era's fashionable portraiture.\n \nThis superb portrait of Chona Recto Ysmael at 21 demonstrates why Amorsolo was the greatest portrait painter for generations. It is an extraordinarily honest painting of a formidable young lady.  According to her son Louie Ysmael, the stately painting  used to hang on a wall at the landing of the stairs.\n \nThe very title “La Divina,” given to her by fashion designers and close friends, conjures an ethereal, serene and breathtaking image of elegance, poise and sophistication, with irreproachable manners and exquisite, inimitable taste, leading  a “near-perfection, cannot-do-wrong lifestyle.”\n \nPart of Fernando Amorsolo’s magic in creating this portrait lies in the aura of nostalgia created by the dress, a Spanish lace  on silk moire by Balenciaga.  In this creation of a portrait, fashion and the fashionableness of the subject played a leading role.  Who could be more eloquently chic at a young age than Chona Recto Ysmael in black? The color choice for understated  elegance, and the extensive, rich white details, and the fashion of the time, the war notwithstanding, played a role in this  winning portrait.  In this portrait, Amorsolo made the most of the high fashion dress the subject is wearing to animate the  composition in a way not possible in his other portraits.  The black dress with what looks like white embroidery lends a unique air of stateliness, even with her casual pose.\n \nEven as a child, Chona Recto Ysmael had a poised, graceful, almost enchanting and uncanny presence in front of a mirror.  Like the typical growing teen during those early years in Manila, she loved the Disney characters like Minnie Mouse, even Betty Boop, potato chips, nuts, Magnolia orange popsicles and chocolates.  Yet it has been written that she would never be caught dead in old, tattered or inappropriate wear, as was admirably witnessed with much pride by her blessed children.  All her life she was tastefully clothed — from her childhood to her deathbed.  She tirelessly begged her Lolo Claro for the expensive, the classic and the very latest clothes, shoes, bags, colognes and jewelry constantly.\nShe even made one of her last requests to her dear friend Mary Prieto that she be cremated from bed to crematory in her  favorite diaphanous silky cotton batiste frock by Christian Dior.  Her signature Philippine designers were an irreplaceable A-list  of talents: Salvacion Lim Higgins, Ramon Valera, Christian Espiritu and Chito Vijandre","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":"<p><strong>Fernando Amorsolo</strong> (1892-1972)<br /><em>Portrait of Chona at 21</em><br />signed and dated 1943 (lower right)<br />oil on canvas<br />47 1/2&rdquo; x 33 1/2&rdquo; (121 cm x 85 cm)</p>","alias":null,"hp":2200000,"bp":0.168,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":2200000,"userBid":null,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":2569600,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":38498,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/61/89/lot/87.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"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":86,"next":88,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}