{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":45832,"auction_id":92,"set_id":121,"lot_number":"31","artist":"Carlos \"Botong\" V. Francisco (1912 - 1969)","title":"Tinikling No. 2","starting_price":24000000,"signed_dated":"signed and inscribed \"Tinikling No.2 from the Original<br /> by Carlos V. Francisco\" (lower right)<br /> ca. 1964","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"41 1/4\" x 121 3/4\" (105 cm x 309 cm)","property":"PROPERTY FROM THE ESTEFANIA ALDABA-LIM COLLECTION","coa":null,"provenance":"Acquired directly from the artist, thence by descent","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"The Tapestry of Filipino Life by Botong Francisco by LISA GUERRERO NAKPIL <br /><br />Botong Francisco was the master of rendering men and their lives larger than either of them, of elevating the commonplace to the spectacular, and in the process, of creating myths and legends.<br /><br /> And he did this with the boldest of concepts — by focusing on the minutiae, the beloved, precise but often overlooked details that make the lives of the Filipino everyman, uniquely and particularly his own.<br /><br /> In Tinikling No. 2, he records the end of the harvest as a twofaced Janus : On one hand, filled with the jubilation of dance and song but also another cycle of hardwork and discipline.<br /><br /> The original owner of this work, the wonder-woman Estafania Aldaba Lim, is recorded by Nick Joaquin to have fallen in love with ballet when she watched a cinematic version of Swan Lake in a Malolos moviehouse as a girl. It’s not surprising that this work that has the Filipino ‘tinikling’ (that must be danced with both grace and skill while hopping between two bamboo poles) would capture her attention. The lead character sways to the sound of an imaginary tune a flower in her hair. It is a theme that Botong would return to, time and again. (‘Tinkling No. 1’, otherwise known as ‘Harvest Festival’ now a lost work, was last seen in the collection of Malacañan Palace, and is dated 1962.)<br /><br /> Like that first Tinikling, the harvest ends with the grinding of the grain: two men put their backs to an unseen stone in the background. To the right, are a pair of men and a woman, pounding the rice. with long pestles in a shared mortar called ‘lusong’. Two women on either side of the work wield bilaos (circular flat baskets) to separate the chaff from the lifegiving grain. Another man seems to be gathering sheaves.<br /><br /> Surrounding this beehive of activity is the community of Angono brethren: a man strumming a guitar, three others gape entranced, drinking in the flow of life. There are three boys as well as the town elder or shaman or apothecary ‘hilot’ who peers out of a window. (Botong typically portrayed this wizened figure in his paintings, and one suspects this character was a kind of alter-ego for the artist.) There are other figures that enrich this tapestry, peering here and there from the nooks and crannies of the work, another distinctive Botong conceit. The papaya and banana trees endemic to every small town in the Philippines book-end the piece, as do a glass jeroboam and a sleeping dog, a sheathed balisong and a gnarled tree trunk.<br /><br /> Interestingly, Botong has included a vignette of what appears to be an artist’s home that we can glimpse through an open window: a candlestick on a dresser, and two paintings. it is, with this singular act of inviting the viewer into his home, Botong has allowed us to enter into his world, through the Kaleidescope of Filipino Life.","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":46000000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":46000000,"userBid":10757,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":55273600,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":44400,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/92/121/lot/31.jpg","isFeatured":1},{"id":44977,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/92/121/lot/31b.jpg","isFeatured":0},{"id":44976,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/92/121/lot/31c.jpg","isFeatured":0},{"id":44975,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/92/121/lot/31d.jpg","isFeatured":0}]},"increment":[],"prev":30,"next":32,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}