Provenance: Provenance: Formerly in the Collection of Mr. Pedro Roxas

ABOUT THE WORK

Lorenzo Guerrero belonged to the second wave of Filipino artists; the first having been led by Damian Domingo who breathed his last in 1834, the year before Guerrero was born. Like Damian, Lorenzo would become famous as a teacher and mentor; and like the ‘Father of Filipino Painting’ leave precious few works behind. In the case of Lorenzo Guerrero, writes excellent biographer E. A. Manuel, “Of his paintings only a few have survived. Many were made to order and a number shipped abroad, specially to Spain; others, housed in churches, were burned. The few that remain are in private collections.” These have become rarer still due to the ravages of World War II which burned the Guerrero houses in Ermita to the ground, taking all those works with them. Guerrero’s works, says Manuel, “at first did not depart very far from nature. He never painted without consulting nature, and he claimed that the only artist is God….. It is in the reproduction of local scenes that Guerrero will be equally remembered (as with his religious themes), if not better appreciated.” Lorenzo Guerrero was a bit of a prodigy, so skilled at drawing that at age 16 he was “already giving drawing lessons — and Jose Rizal described him as a master who had virtually taught himself.” With Damian Domingo’s death, his beloved ‘academia’ had closed its doors. A series of Spanish artists “were imported from the Peninsula”, says Manuel, and Guerrero appears to have studied under Cortina and Valdes, the first instructors of the second academy. The work at hand is of lyrical perfection, as befits the teacher of Juan Luna and Fabian de la Rosa: In the shade of a lush bamboo grove, a group of bathers cool themselves in the green waters. A woman with her hair down, and dressed in a blue blouse and red ‘tapis’ (skirt), appears to be holding a pail. With her are two more figures, in various degrees of undress. All three are reflected in the clear river. To the right of them is the outline of a ‘banca’ (dugout), slightly aground beneath a ‘nipa’ (thatch) hut, whose ladder leads down to the river’s edge.. A grouping of rocks are half-submerged in the water, indicating perhaps low tide. Just past the little house is a pair of other boats, this time with masts. A couple — a blue-shirted fellow wearing the distinctive ‘salakot’ (rush hat) with a silver finial and trimmings that indicates some status cups both his hands and seems to be calling out to the bathers. A woman, sitting on her haunches and with a plainer straw hat on her back, takes in the quiet countryside vignette. Guerrero was a city creature, through and through, but he appears to have become familiar with the byways of Marikina, thanks to his romantic pursuit of a favorite student, Clemencia Ramirez. She would be banished by her family to this town outside Manila, in an attempt to take her away from the life of a wife of an artist. Instead, Guerrero became seasoned in capturing the beauties of the Philippine riversides. In 1868, he would eventually prevail over her father’s wishes. -Lisa Guerrero Nakpil