PROPERTY FROM THE EDWARD J. NELL COLLECTION

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

Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist

ABOUT THE WORK

Amorsolo's Lady with Basket, another painting from the Edward J. Nell collection, comes from the same year as the previous lot, Under the Mango Tree. It was acquired by Nell around the same time he acquired Under the Mango Tree. Like the earlier work, he likely gifted it to his wife, Helen Mary Carr Hipkins, whom Isidra Reyes described in the Leon Gallery interview, appreciated more the finer things in life like art, as her husband had a hectic schedule running his business empire. The charming image of the dalaga may have also reminded Nell of Helen's timeless beauty. Lady with Basket features the same dalaga in Under the Mango Tree. While the dalaga takes her much-needed afternoon siesta in the previous work, Lady with Basket sees the dalaga working in the morning, peddling her fresh produce around the neighborhood. In the background, a group of women engaging in lively discussions around a table filled with commodities are active indicators of a vibrant market scene by the road. Lady with Basket and Under the Mango Tree, which both come from the artistic, commercial, and popularity peak of Amorsolo, are undoubtedly the jewels in Edward Joseph Nell's collection. But beyond being commissioned by an American magnate, the work at hand resonates particularly with the nation with its vibrantly rich display of Filipino essence. Lady with Basket is yet another epitome of Amorsolo's contribution to the flowering of Filipino civic and cultural nationalism of the 1920s up to the 1930s, which resulted from the optimism for the Philippines' eventual independence. Amorsolo's emphasis on the image of the native dalaga as someone possessing an active role in society further strengthened the notion that a collective consciousness rooted in the fostering of the autochthonous and the agricultural is essential to understanding one's history and identity. The Filipinismo shown by Amorsolo and his pastoral paintings manifests an ideal of the agricultural land being tilled by the natives as an intrinsic element of the map to sovereignty and genuine development. Through Amorsolo's paintings of the indigenous, which found their way on the front pages of the most popular magazines and newspapers and the colored calendars, people from all over the country, especially those in the provinces whose living and being, culture and heritage, are evocatively captured in the maestro's canvas, found a way to familiarize and identify themselves with his art. In the process of this identification, Amorsolo became a household name, and he became the very definition of Philippine painting. Amorsolo's contribution to the flowering of Philippine painting was indelible. So omnipresent was his art that he unwittingly introduced, to a significant extent, painting to people in the provinces whom Amorsolo exalted in his works. Even the champion and mother of Philippine modernism, Purita KalawLedesma, wrote an entire article in The Manila Chronicle titled "Amorsolo's place in Philippine art" (May 7, 1972) in the wake of Amorsolo's proclamation as the country's first national artist. "Amorsolo was lucky enough to live in an age where the art of reproduction had come into being." Kalaw-Ledesma writes. "Some of his paintings were reproduced in colored calendars of the Insular Life and the Filipinas Compania de Seguros. Through this means, many people in the provinces and even in Manila were able to appreciate good painting, where otherwise they would never have been exposed to this art. Thus, painting became synonymous with the word 'Amorsolo.'" Kalaw-Ledesma continues: "Every man has his place in the sun. To my mind, Amorsolo's contribution was his vision of the Philippine sunlight and landscape, and his portrayal of a happy era long gone (or maybe of one which had never existed), which we could look back to, when things look very bleak, as having been so once upon a time." (Adrian Maranan)