Provenance: Private Collection, Manila

ABOUT THE WORK

De la Rosa has offered an earthy embodiment of landscape sensibility, running variations on space and light, materiality and evanescence. He encapsulates the aura of a lost and perhaps more enchanted era. This arcadian image of a couple — a woman by the river and a man on a boat — provides a nostalgic preserve of a preindustrial world. De la Rosa makes no attempt to prettify the rugged riverbanks. The view takes an interesting, flinty aspect as the artist works out the textural and tonal details of the trees and shrubs with brush and maybe even a palette knife. The intensity of the dark colors vibrating along the banks is relieved by the morning sky with thin clouds sweeping in an implied manner and there is the visual sensuousness as depicted by the river surface.