Leon Gallery wishes to thank Mrs. Sylvia Amorsolo-Lazo for confirming the authenticity of this lot

ABOUT THE WORK

The passion for landscape painting remains strong through the generations that Amorsolo witnessed. He continues this with his landscape art which spoke, with surprising vigor, of the notion of a meditative, peaceful world in the nutshell of the Philippine countryside. Every schoolchild was familiar with Amorsolo scenes of planting rice and streams overhung with bamboo shot through with sunlight. In his treatment of the sky, Amorsolo rejects the operatic bravado of his towering orange clouds of the distant 1920s and replaces it with a lighter, quieter touch, appropriate for his twilight years.. The foreground has been simplified and the background has been strengthened with the visually perceived depth of the pond, the dense copses of trees, and the silhouette of a hut. Amorsolo as the visual sensualist uses a repertoire of techniques in catching the effect of muted sunlight on water. The effect is gauged against the shadows cast on the water. Amorsolo is an artist who is deeply drawn to the landscape as a means of expressing his singular vision of the world. He constantly eschewed the new trends of his time, holding firmly in his belief in oil on canvas as the medium that best suits his requirements for color and nuanced textures on surfaces, as well as seeing views with the use of oil colors as the best way through which to achieve nature’s effects. The note of sentiment is clear but still reserved, implicit rather than explicit: an appropriation of nature’s grace sans stirring situations. 63