Provenance: Acquired from the family of Carlos V. Francisco after his death by Victorino Blancada of Angono

Literature: Ramon N. Villegas & Lisa Guerrero Nakpil, TWO NAVELS: LEON CURATED AUCTION, Leon Gallery, Makati City, 2016, p. 18-23 (illustrated)

ABOUT THE WORK

With an authentication provided by Mr. Salvador “Badong” Juban, protegé and artist assistant of Carlos “Botong” V. Francisco from 1959 until his death in 1969. Engaging are the images of those languorous native women in the works of illustrator-painter Carlos “Botong” Francisco. It should surprise no one that the art of illustration affects us more directly than the works of the great masters held captive in museums. Botong occupies both worlds with ease: a deft illustrator and a master painter. Although Botong did not finish his degree and was forced to work, towards the end of his college days, Botong found a job as layout artist at the Philippine Herald. Although he did not relish the work of a layout artist, he persevered at the Herald and later at the Manila Tribune. When the School of Architecture and Fine Arts was established at the University of Santo Tomas shortly before the war, Botong the illustrator, painter and layout artist became a teacher. In 1945, Manila was a heap of rubble, and people find a kindred nostalgia for a vanished past. Even before he found fame, Botong’s works already captured the sentiments of an era: the Spanish, and now the American eras are over, and a longing for an identity of a people raised in the bounty of the land and the sea were mirrored in the works of Carlos “Botong” Francisco. One of the most surprising phenomena in postwar Philippine art is how Botong almost singlehandedly gave effective and authentic advantage of the existence of native and exotic Philippine culture. During the Spanish era they were barely portrayed, and during the American period, they were the white man’s symbols of conquest. Genre, which was highly favored in the American era, avoided the exotic for the familiar. Conveying the same elegant hauteur that is to be seen in his world famous — as in Newsweek worthy- murals in the next decade, the fifties, Kalantiao at Lubluban exhibits a two dimensional quality and reveals Carlos Botong Francisco’s penchant for elaborate pictorial elements. Botong — whom the critic Rodolfo Paras Perez called “troubadour of traditional values, of traditional ways about to vanish”, arrived at an idiom which was both Filipino and Asian in the fresh colors of the subjects, the curvilinear lines in rhythm creating decorative patterns and the particular disposition of space which satisfies the Filipino avoidance “horror vacui”. Botong was a recognized costume designer for films. Botong’s costume designs for film or otherwise were conceived in intricate detail, a combination of fastidious historical research and artistic eruditeness. After World War 2, among the many things that Botong did as an artist was to design costumes for Romeo at Julieta (Romeo and Juliet), as well as Prinsipe Tenoso (Prince Tenoso), Ibong Adarna (Adarna Bird), Siete Infantes de Lara (Seven Devils) and the Juan Tamad series. The verticality if the composition and subjects of “Kalantiao at Lubluban” anticipates Botong’s foreshortening of the human body in his murals which in practice served as an optical device that neutralized the oblique angle at which a hanging mural is invariably viewed. Botong filled his sketchpads with costumed figures similar to those “tipos del pais” done by nineteenth century painters such as Damian Domingo. But while in the 19th century these costumes were rendered to satisfy foreign curiosity on the exotic inhabitants of the Philippines, Botong’s own visual pageantries are imbued with a mid - twentieth century and surprisingly more sympathetic sensibility. For a work done very early in his career, Botong reveals a mastery of visual communication and his affinity for Filipino historical subjects. This meticulous attention for detail was not without its own authoritative source, for Botong was steeped in the customs and folklore of the Philippines. The artist is more involved with an appreciative depiction of authentic Filipino attires than with an idealization of what is in vogue. Botong greatly contributed towards developing a Filipino aesthetic, drawing inspiration from the history, customs and traditions of the people, as well as from the familiar environment. Botong’s outlook on life and art continued to be a strong influence on many young artists lining after he was gone. His characteristic style and themes were the basis of the regional group of painters which grew around Botong’s hometown of Angono along Laguna Lake.