Provenance: Adelina Ines Montilla Montilla (Nelly Montilla / Mr. Ramon Zamora Paterno / Mr. Primitivo Valerio Lovina)

ABOUT THE WORK

Doña Josefa Ortaliz y Jordan known as “Pay” was a beautiful Spanish mestiza of a prominent family from Iloilo in Panay island who married Don Bonifacio Montilla y Yanson of Pulupandan, Negros Occidental, son of the Spanish patriarch Don Agustin Montilla y Orendain, ur–ancestor of all the Montillas of Negros island, and his wife the Chinese mestiza Dona Vicenta Yanson y Locsin–Zarandin. The Montillas were a prominent Spanish military and political family: Don Agustin’s father Don Jose Montilla was Governor– General of the Marianas islands in the 1820s. Don Agustin acquired, cleared, and planted vast tracts of agricultural land in Negros Occidental and built his palatial home known as “Balay Daku” during the 1840s --- one of the two largest residences in the province --- in the middle of his sprawling lands in barrio Ubay in Pulupandan town (the other large house being Don Aniceto Lacson y Ledesma’s famous 1880s Neo–Renaissance palace “Casa Grande” in barrio Matab–ang, Talisay town). The Montilla clan of Pulupandan town were famous landowners and powerful politicians southwest of Bacolod as were the Lacson and Lizares clans of Talisay town northeast of it. Dona Josefa Ortaliz y Jordan and Don Bonifacio Montilla y Yanson had seven children, one son and six daughters: Lina, Enriqueta, Marta, Agustin, Felisa, Soledad, and Bonifacia. Unfortunately, Josefa aka “Pay” passed away at a young age. Her eldest daughter Lina Montilla y Ortaliz (Sra de Candido Montilla) became the de facto mother to the younger siblings. The youngest daughter Bonifacia Montilla y Ortaliz (aka “Pasay,” Sra de Eugenio Veraguth) inherited the vast Balay Daku of her grandfather Don Agustin; she bequeathed it to her niece Angelina Mijares y Montilla (Mrs Bertram Percival Tomkins), daughter of her sister Marta Montilla y Ortaliz (Sra de Antero Mijares). Don Agustin Montilla and Dona Vicenta Yanson spawned a clan with many famous descendants: hacendero and BISCOM President Enrique Montilla Montilla; hacendera Marta Montilla Mijares (Mrs Carlos Benedicto Rivilla); socialite Adelina Ines Montilla Montilla (known as “Nelly”/Mrs Ramon Zamora Paterno/later Mrs Primitivo Valerio Lovina); businesswoman Teresa Arroyo Montilla (Mrs Vicente Lopez Araneta); philanthropist Maria Soledad Cuyugan Oppen– Cojuangco (known as “Gretchen”/Mrs Eduardo Murphy Cojuangco Jr); art & antiques collector and cosmopolitan bon vivant Herbert Montilla–Mijares Tomkins; technocrat Bonnie Rivilla Fuentes; architect Raymond Rivilla Fuentes; Atty Agustin Montilla IV, Chef Tonyboy Escalante; botanist and horticulturist Josef Montilla Sagemuller; businesswoman Gigi Lacson Lacson; tourism executive Baba Montilla Araneta–Escudero; businesswoman Mia Paterno–Rodriguez; and many others from the Montilla branches of the allied Mijares, Abello, Gonzalez, Oppen, (Veraguth), Esteban, Camara, Lopez, Fuentes, Rivilla, Tomkins, Mabus, Araneta, Lacson, Arroyo, Paterno, Lovina, Nieva, Montinola, Corral, Kramer, and Weber clans. According to their family tradition, Montilla descendants commissioned many oil portraits of their antecedents from master portraitist Fernando Amorsolo during the postwar period (from around 1946–60). Fernando Amorsolo was the Filipino portraitist par excellence of the twentieth century. His talent was recognized early during his youth and the multimillionaire art patron Don Enrique Zobel de Ayala sent him to Madrid for further studies; prestigious Zobel de Ayala patronage also set the bar for Amorsolo’s clientele which included Filipino high society and American and European expatriate businessmen. His portraits are visual records of affluent Filipino society from around 1920 to his passing in 1972; there was a time in Filipino social history (prewar–postwar) wherein a portrait or a genre painting by Fernando Amorsolo was “de rigueur” in every upper–class Filipino residence. His best portraits, especially from prewar, were dramatically lit with alluring chiaroscuro. However, he also had a Rembrandt–esque phase from the mid–1950s to the very early 1960s when he painted subjects with subdued, subtle, even dim lighting inspired by the great Dutch painter Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (o 1606 – + 1669). - (Acknowledgments: Mr. Josef Montilla Sagemuller)