PROPERTY FROM THE DON ANSELMO TRINIDAD COLLECTION

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

ABOUT THE WORK

Fernando Cueto Amorsolo was born on the feastday of San Fernando of legend, in real life, King Ferdinand III of Leon and Castille at at time when Spain was not yet its own country. It would be the perfect name for the man who would become the crowned head, several times over, of Filipino painting in the first part of the 20th century. Upon his father’s demise, Amorsolo would go to live with his mother’s cousin, the famous painter Fabian de la Rosa at the age of 13 — where, fortunately, his artistic talents would not escape notice. He would therefore be recognized as a bit of a prodigy and was sent at just age 14 to enroll at the Liceo de Manila to take drawing and painting lessons. At age 16, he would receive a silver medal in a competition organized by the Asociacion Internacional de Artistas. Astonishingly, the other silver and gold medalists where two and three times his age such as Ramon Peralta, 31, Jorge Pineda, 29, and Teodoro Buenaventura, 45 for the silver. The gold medalists, on the other hand, were Vicente Rivera y Mir, 36 and Patricio Gaston O’Farrell, 29. The young lad caused a sensation — and prophetically, he would soon launch a career that would best all these other talented senior artists. Out of necessity, however, Amorsolo would learn to balance his artistic pursuits with commercial commissions. While he was at the newly-opened University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts, he was also dashing off illustrations for novels, joining other design competitions, and even teaching painting. He would famously design the label for Ginebra San Miguel for the firm of the Zobel de Ayalas; and its patriarch Don Enrique would send him to Madrid on a scholarship. In the 20s, Amorsolo would reprise Fabian de la Rosa’s most famous work Planting Rice and quickly discover his talent at story-telling of the lives of the Filipino in the field or on the water, of his ordinary blessed life in the here and now as well as his glorious past. The Maestro would create landscapes of all kinds, flame trees in bloom, parish churches, green fields, immortal sunrises. In 1944, however, Fernando Amorsolo would begin a series of Manila under siege during the War. The first of the Don Anselmo Trinidad trove at hand is a view of Quiapo and Sta Cruz ablaze. The twin towers of the steel cathedral San Sebastian are outlined in the red glow of a conflagration. Perhaps it is the hulking block of the Great Eastern Hotel, the tallest edifice in Manila at the time, can be seen on the right. The sky is dimmed by black clouds of burning timber and oil — as lives, hopes and dreams and almost four hundred years of the city’s history go up in flames. A coconut tree in the foreground is an innocuous and unlikely witness to the destruction, just one of the many ironies of that terrible conflict.