Provenance: A wedding gift from the artist to Benito and Amalia Natividad

ABOUT THE WORK

Tolentino and Hen. Natividad by MYE ATIENZA Acourageous military leader, eventually judge and then governor, Gen. Benito Alejandrino Natividad was born on January 12,1875 in Jaen, Nueva Ecija. Together with his brothers, he would take up arms and fight in the Philippine Revolution to avenge his father's death, a prominent lawyer and the first martyr of Nueva Ecija. He also fought in the PhilippineAmerican War and served as aide to Gen Antonio Luna who led the Central Luzon campaign. Natividad was almost killed fighting alongside Gen. Luna, suffering a serious gunshot wound in the leg. (The young Lieutenant Manuel Quezon was promoted to captain for getting him to safety by hiding Col. Natividad in a haystack.) For this valiancy under fire and just at the age of 24, Natividad was thus promoted to brigadier-general, becoming one of the youngest in the War. If he had been more physically fit, he would have been with Gen. Luna during that tragic trip to Cabanatuan. He would become a cripple due to his wounds, but this would not deter him. When Gen Manuel Tinio was recalled by Aguinaldo to help in the reorganization of the forces of Nueva Ecija in 1899, Natividad remained behind with just a few riflemen and a number of armed insurgents who oversaw the whole Ilocos region at the time which included the guarding of 4,000 Spanish prisoners and 25 captured Americans, scattered in various towns. Despite their overwhelming numbers, the prisoners did not even think of rising against the General because they were treated very well and they deemed "El Cojo” (“The Cripple”) not a man to trifle with. His other biographer, Antonio Figueroa, writes, “Gen. Natividad was a sort of legend, unfazed by the injuries he sustained. Juan Villamor, a colleague, described his courage as tenacious, despite ‘his helplessness [because] of his wounds, one of which compelled him to drag his right leg, making it exceedingly difficult for him to climb the mountains, preferring instead to take his luck with the Tinio Brigade in its guerrilla operations, rather than surrender himself to the enemy as others had done.’ Figueroa continues, “Gen. Natividad surrendered to the Americans on July 20, 1906 in Rizal, Cavite, along with revolutionary president Macario Sacay, war secretary and second vice-president Francisco Carreon; and third-lieutenant generals Julian Montalon, L.D. Villafuerte, and Lucio de Vega. When the war ended, he continued his law studies at San Juan de Letran and became a full-fledged lawyer. He would rise to become a judge. He was elected governor in Nueva Ecija in 1910-1913 and successively served as provincial fiscal in Zambales, Tarlac, Cavite, Rizal, Samar, Albay and Leyte. He was promoted as judge of the Court of First Instance in Leyte, Cebu and Davao. Gen. Natividad married late at the age of 40 to Amalia Inocencio, ten years his junior and a granddaughter of Maximo Inocencio, one of the first martyrs of Cavite, of Trece Martires fame. The work at hand, by Guillermo Tolentino, was a wedding gift to the happy couple. It is a work that we can assume is circa 1915, the year that Gen. Natividad would marry. That would also be the year that Tolentino would graduate from the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts. It’s a vista of an ideal Philippines, the country that the General and wife fought so hard to re-imagine. A woman dressed in a red tapis dips her toe delicately into a clear stream. A humble thatch hut, banana tree, bamboo groves in the distance, all complete the picture of idyllic simplicity from a bygone era. Family lore has it that the couple first met during those days of revolution. Amalia would reminisce that she wold sometimes accompany her father to the secret meetings. (Figueroa has asserted that Gen. Natividad also served as member of the Supreme Council of the revolutionary government.) Amalia would say that during their courtship, she would never know if Benito would return alive. They would have two daughters, Aurea and Amparo, who would marry William Palou. The painting was handed down to Amparo who took care of her father till he passed away on December 1, 1964 and has remained with the family till today. (Lisa Guerrero Nakpil)