PROPERTY FROM THE DON EUGENIO M. LOPEZ JR. COLLECTION

ABOUT THE WORK

One of Fabian de la Rosa’s former students who became a teacher at the UP School of Fine Arts, Dominador Castaneda, would say in his lectures that De la Rosa had been influenced by French realist painter Gustave Courbet’s creative imagination and defiance against art conventions during his time. Courbet would paint ordinary people and quotidian life rather than romantic scenes, honoring common people and displaying the human dignity of laborers. This influence reflects in this painting of a dalaga wearing the baro’t saya in which De la Rosa valorized the every day with the way he treated his common subject. Here, his play on light and shadow through his unique painting style and mode of expression is carefully and masterfully thought-out. Captured light and attention to detail are just some of the remarkable features in this piece, two of the salient qualities in his body of works noted by various critics.