FROM a distance, it’s as though you could almost feel the warmth of sunlight seeping through Fernando Amorsolo’s 1931 masterpiece, titled Mango Gatherers. The 31” x 33” oil-on-panel painting was painted for Doña Margarita Zóbel de Ayala, sister of millionaire-industrialist and patriarch of the Zóbel de Ayala family, Don Enrique. Don Enrique supported and paid for Amorsolo’s education in Academis de San Fernando in Madrid.
Then, there was an untitled bas-relief sculpture by none other than National Hero Jose Rizal. Touted to have been carved around 1892 to 1896 while Rizal was exiled in Dapitan, the wood work, later named The Filipino, shows what appears to be a sportsman who bears a striking resemblance to Rizal.
Both of these priceless artifacts were sold at P46.7 million and P17.5 million, respectively, in the recent 2018 Spectacular Midyear Auction of the León Gallery in Makati.
“There are Amorsolos—and there are Amorsolos,” writes gallery Director Jaime Ponce de Leon. “The Peracamps Amorsolo [of the Counts of Peracamps] is one of the most astonishing that has come on the market. Sylvia Amorsolo-Lazo has deemed it possibly the first-ever painting with the subject-matter.”
Melian-Zóbel’s Amorsolo piece was acquired by the fourth Count of Peracamps and El Hogar Filipino founder, Don Antonio Meilan Zóbel, and his wife Doña Margarita Zóbel de Ayala, and by descent from their son, the fifth Count of Peracamps, Don Leopoldo Melian and his wife Natividad Ugarte Aboitiz.
Veteran author Alfredo Roces describes Mango Gatherers as a “spectacular combination of romanticism at left and meticulous literalism at the right.” Furthermore, “the bucolic mood and timeless setting looks back to the 18th century pictures, to the fete gallants of French artists.”
Perhaps the only work done in wood by Rizal, The Filipino is a visual imagery of the idealized Filipino. This sculpture was last seen by the public in the book Pictorial Album on Rizal, which was published by the Jose Rizal National Centennial Commission in 1962.
The art piece descended from the family of Narcisa Rizal, the third sibling of the hero’s family and her daughter Angelica.
“Intended to be a riposte to the Spanish accusations that Filipinos were slothful savages, The Filipino is a virile young man symbolizing our country’s vitality and burgeoning nationhood,” notes de Leon.
The man of auction also writes that “after the record-breaking sale of Jose Joya [P112 million] and other moderns at the Asian Cultural Council Auction in March, [León Gallery] veers toward excellent works from the 19th and the first half of 20th centuries.”
With an emphasis on Philippine heritage paintings and treasured antiques, this season’s auction also featured the works of Lorenzo Guerrero, Jose Joya, Vicente Manansala, Benedicto Cabrera and many other prominent Filipino names in the arts.
For one, an extraordinary Guerrero artwork, titled At River’s Bend, which features a view of the Pasig River eastern banks, was sold at a staggering P17.5-million tag. Guerrero was the mentor of Juan Luna and was himself a notable artist. De Leon described Guerrero’s work as officially “the Philippines most expensive painting, according to size.”
The repatriated artwork appears to have been saved from the war since its provenance, according to León, is from a “private collection in Madrid, Spain.”
The historic Arnedo Table, which Antonio Luna, William Howard Taft and Jose Rizal himself sat on, was sold at P7.6 million.
A trove of documents that once belonged to Rizal’s mother, Teodora Alonso, along with various letters and court documents, including important historical letters from M.H. del Pilar and Gregoria de Jesus, went to a mystery collector for P2.4 million.
A series of modern as well as contemporary artists also set their own records, and leading the roster was Roberto Chabet whose gray Blind Window captured all the shades of desperation of Lee Harvey Oswald moments before (and after) he assassinated President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1964.
This piece brought in a stunning P9.3 million, fitting for the man credited with shaping the careers of several generations of Filipino abstract artists, one of which is Marciano Galang.
Galang’s enormous work Morning Calm, fetched an unprecedented P2.1 million. Meanwhile, Jose John Santos III’s portrait of two turn-of-the-century women leaning out of windows fetched P5.8 million at León’s latest auction.
Other high-profile results included Mark Justiniani’s Ang Hari (The King) at P6.4 million, and Florencio Concepcion for Abstract at P2.3 million; while Manuel Rodriguez Sr.’s pointillist Planting Rice reaped almost P 3 million and Danilo Dalena’s coquettish Dancing Boots brought in an unprecedented peak of P6.4 million. All of these were brand-new benchmarks.