Leon Gallery wishes to thank Mrs. Sylvia Amorsolo-Lazo for confirming the authenticity of this lot

Provenance: Commissioned from the artist by Don Jose M. Ossorio, son of sugar baron Miguel J. Ossorio and brother of renowned Filipino-American abstract expressionist Alfonso Ossorio, and from thence, a gift to his daughter, Claire Marie Ossorio.

ABOUT THE WORK

The venerable Don Jose M. Ossorio commissioned this magnificent painting from Fernando Amorsolo for two reasons: first, to commemorate the family’s triumph over the trials and tribulations of World War II; second, as a fatherly indulgence to a young girl’s love of horses. His daughter, Claire Marie, remembers, “My father gave me this painting many years ago. His name was Jose M. Ossorio. He was born in the Philippine Islands and lived there with my mother and his three older siblings before the war, working at the Victorias Milling Company in Negros, his father Miguel J. Ossorio’s sugar plant.” “He and my mom and siblings were incarcerated and survived the Japanese prison camp at the University of Santo Tomas. They emigrated to the US after the war and I was born in 1951. He gave me this painting in 1964. He told me he commissioned this work to include horses—I was horse-crazy at thirteen—and a church as he was a devout Catholic. He said the church, depicted in the painting, was the only one left standing after the bombings.” It must have been a special commission indeed. After Amorsolo’s heartbreaking renditions of a fallen senate and the ruins of Rizal Avenue, the maestro would create only very few Manila scenes, preferring to portray the sun-dappled fields and rivers of the Philippine countryside or the country’s august pre-Spanish past instead. In this piece, Amorsolo captures the baroque splendor of the Augustinian order’s Malate Church, which is devoted to the miraculous Nuestra Señora de los Remedios (Our Lady of Remedies). A crowd of churchgoers spills out in the summer sun, the women in bright-colored frocks. Pastel umbrellas protect them from the heat. Amorsolo, in a few expert brushstrokes, tells several stories unfolding in the distance—a father tugging his child home urgently by the hand, a mother tending to two small children in the park rotunda. They are gentle echoes of parental love. As promised by Don Jose, a horse-drawn carretela trots briskly by the graceful statue of Queen Isabella II. One can almost hear its hooves on the gravel as it does so. Sculpted in 1860, the monument languished in the Manila ayuntamiento (townhall) storeroom when the monarch fell into disfavor. The queen’s statue was finally installed in 1896 across Malate Church, facing the historic Manila Bay, where she remained through World War II. In 1963, it still reigned over Roxas Boulevard, but would be blown down by the strong winds of Typhoon Yoling in 1970. A flame tree spreads its blossom-laden branches as if in prayer, echoed in the hues of the church roof. The fiery flowers are a beloved feature of Amorsolo’s famous paintings, capturing his poetic optimism and love of country. In the same year that this masterpiece was painted, Amorsolo received the Araw ng Maynila Award for painting and the Republic Cultural Heritage Award. He would be named the country’s first National Artist less than a decade afterwards. -Lisa Guerrero Nakpil