Accompanied by a certificate issued by Mrs. Sylvia Amorsolo-Lazo confirming the authenticity of this lot

ABOUT THE WORK

Amorsolo and His Eternal Feasts by LISA GUERRERO NAKPIL - Summer and sunshine are recurring delights of the Fernando Amorsolo painting. In this particular treasure, the master of the eternal feast crams an impossible number of the ‘festejadas’ (fiesta- goers). There are tiny tots and mothers and fathers, some have arrived from the fields, others by cart (there’s a wheel of one in the picture) as well as by boat. In the foreground, a delicate banca perches on the riverbank, still brimming with fruit, waiting to be unloaded. A couple minds a pig roasting on a spit and an open fire. In the distance, a haystack of grain lets us know that it is harvest time and occasion for rejoicing. A pair of dancers appear to be floating above the crowd as they hop and prance the ‘tinikling.’ The spreading branches of a mango tree and a quaint nipa hut complete the view of a blissful life, combining all of the maestro’s favorite elements of midday meals and fruit vendors and dancers in a single vignette. Fernando Amorsolo was born at the tail-end of a Filipino summer in May. He would spend his boyhood south of Manila, where his father would go to try his luck and find his fortune. Life in the country was not to be for Amorsolo, with his pater’s unexpected demise, and he found his way to the world of art through the good graces of an uncle, the by- then renowned Fabian de la Rosa, a cousin of his mother’s. It would be a turn of events that the nation will always be grateful for, as Amorsolo captured the essence of Filipino life for the following generations in painting after painting such as this.