Juan Luna: La Patria En Peligro (Detail)
Juan Luna (1857-1899)
La Patria En Peligro (The French Conflagration)
signed (lower right)
oil on canvas
27” x 51 1/2” (69 cm x 131 cm)
Opening bid: P 8,000,000
Lot 96 of the Leon Gallery auction on 18 February 2017. Please see www.leon-gallery.com for more details.
Provenance:
Ramon J. Fernandez was a prominent businessman, mayor of Manila from 1920 to 1923, and later became a senator. He belonged to the era in Philippine history pregnant with moral virtues. His simple ways belied his stature as a man of good will, unimpeachable character, genuine patriotism and solid achievements. One of the 11 children of Isidro Fernandez, a suger industrialist from Binondo, and Francisca de Castro, he was born on April 12, 1878, in San Miguel, Manila. After obtaining a B.A. from the Ateneo Municipal de Manila in 1898, he pursued an electrical engineering course in London. He was related to Don Jose Bonifacio Roxas, prominent businessman, who helped him in his studies and career.
Don Ramon returned in 1901 and organized the electrical lighting system of the San Miguel Brewery in 1901, where he worked the shipping line of Fernandez Hermanos in 1904. The brothers later purchased the shipping line of the Compañia Maritima in 1912. Ramon took over the management of this line in 1939 following the death, of Jose, who had headed it for 27 years. On March 4, 1920, Gov. Francis Burton Harrison appointed him mayor of Manila. During his term the famous cabinet crisis took place in July, 1923.
He figured in this affair by his refusal to comply with Gov. Leonard Wood’s demand to have American Detective Ray Conley reinstated in the Manila Police Force. In October of that year he ran for senator of the fourth senatorial district, and defeated the Wood-sponsored candidate, Juan Sumulong of the Democratas. He served the remaining two years of the term of Pedro Guevara who had been named Resident Commissioner to the United States. Fernandez was the publisher of such nationalistic periodicals as "El Debate", "La Opinion" and "Pagkakaisa". He married Felisa Hocson in 1908 but they had no children. He was 86 when he died in San Juan, Rizal, on Nov. 10, 1964. (Source: Filipinas Heritage Library Archive)
Augusto “Toto” M. R. Gonzalez shares that “The Ramon Fernandez and Felisa Hocson y Valenzuela residence in San Juan… was set on top of the Pinaglabanan hill on 4 hectares directly across from the Pinaglabanan Church; it had a racecourse for horses; sheep and deer were also raised on the property. The house was hung with large masterpieces by prewar Filipino masters like Fabian de la Rosa, Fernando Amorsolo, and Jorge Pineda.”
Source: Retrato Photo Archive of the Filipinas Heritage Library, Ramon J. Fernandez, Retrieved from URL. (www.retrato.com.ph/list.asp subject=82&heading=&s... searchwhere=&keyword=&pg=17)
Literature: Zoilo M. Galang et al., Encyclopedia of the Philippines (Vol. II – ART), McCullough Printing Company, Manila, 1953, p. 255 (illustrated)
Painted in Paris, "La Patria En Peligro” is all about recalling the weight of a glorious episode in an unnamed country’s history. It can be any country, but what is important is Freedom was the common denominator of revolutionary dreams.
When Luna arrived in Paris in 1885 however, the French Salon was dying, Impressionism has already passed its zenith, and Neo Impressionism, its offshoot, was gaining force. Yet the old French Salon held on to its classicist moorings, thus Luna entered his Spoliarium in the Salon of 1886 set up by the Society of French Artists, where it competed with 2,500 works from all over Europe. That it managed to win a bronze medal of the third class was no mean feat.
In an assessment of his art, historians distinguish two Lunas. One is an informal Luna, who painted for the sheer joy of it. The other is the Luna who projected an imposing public image, the theatrical, grandiose Luna who beat the European Salon aesthetes at their own game.
The variety of figures and the well-developed composition allow one to postulate that the painting was not the master’s first on the historical theme. Nurtured in the academic classical canons then prevalent all over the Western World, Luna followed the conventional steps in attaining professional success.
In 1887, Luna went to Spain to enter in that year's Exposition where two of his historical themed pieces, the La Batalla de Lepanto and the Rendicion de Granada (Surrender of Granada), both won in the exhibition. Earlier in May 1884, he shipped the large canvas of the Spoliarium to Madrid for the year's Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes where he was the first recipient of the three gold medals awarded in the exhibition.
But all of that happened in traditional old Madrid, and in Paris, Luna realized the painful limitations of the style called the Grand Manner sanctioned by the Salon pedants. It was also a groaning from the sheer weight of its sentimental aestheticism and melodramatic clichés. Gladiatorial contests, Roman orgies, Oriental baths, Pygmalion and Galatea... In Paris Luna had misgivings.
The Paris Exposition of 1889 was meant to celebrate a century of progress for France since the Revolution: “To see is to believe,” wrote Luna of it to Javier Gomez... ...by 26 May 1889 however, in his letter to Javier Gomez de la Serna: ...”all historical painting is false, starting with the very concept. And those who think that correct drawing, good composition, brilliant coloring and a lot of adornment are enough to make it valid are mistaken.” This statement, however, does not signify Luna’s break with the academic tradition nor his sympathy with impressionism, as many critics earlier presumed, but rather his leaving towards the more progressive faction of the Salon — “I belong to the dissident Salon” he declared on 5 May 1890 to Rizal. The Salon of 1890, which had Luna so excited, was the first show of a new group, the Societe Nationale des Beaux Arts, which advocated for a slightly more liberal Salon.
The new group felt that the old Societe des Artistes Independants that had seceded in 1884, was too avant garde to be academically competent and disciplined Luna’s choice of subject was influenced by his sympathy for members of the salon who were members of the Socialist Party of France.
These socialist artists had adopted the Courbet dictum that the ordinary happenings of everyday life were as valid a subject for art as great historical events; and in their vision of art as a medium for exposing political and social evils they espoused the Daumier doctrine though not his caricaturing style. Socialist art would not gain ground as Luna expected, but it would be effective in politicizing the masses in other countries such as Russia.
With the rich dark grey to black tones, the influence of Courbet, who advocated drawni g subjects from one’s own time is manifest in "La Patria En Peligro". With its elements of Romanticism, his style opens up comparisons to Delacroix, Rembrandt and Daumier. In the same way that Daumier’s “The Uprising” depicts a moment of revolutionary uproar in the streets, with people defined by indeterminate surface treatments against a scumbled background and at enough distance to diminish detail, Luna paints a sweep of space, totally avoiding lavish detail and animate it with human activity, corporeal but somewhat vague.
In the same way that Rembrandt’s “Nightwatch” made effective use of light and shadow (tenebrism) and the perception of motion in what would have been a static military portrait. Tenebrism, from the Italian, tenebroso (murky) is a style of painting using violent contrasts of light and dark, and where darkness becomes a dominating feature of the image. Yet the rich, dark palette is broken with delicate yet dramatic passages of white areas.
In "La Patria En Peligro", Luna did not give emphasis on precise drawing that characterized the academic art earlier in his career, and instead gave a new prominence to freely brushed color using larger, looser brushstrokes and less precise lines. In the same way that Delacroix’s “Liberty leading the People” depicted Liberty as both an allegorical goddess-figure and a robust woman of the people, "La Patria En Peligro" features a robust woman holding a child sufficiently infused with allegory. Some characters are represented more distinctly than others, and the three or four figures who are more distinctly identified are supplemented by almost as many subordinate figures, included by Luna for pictorial effect. The barely distinguishable human figures unleash elementary and destructive passions.
The monochromatically dark tonality, kindled here and there by flashes of color, adds power. Abandoning his use of vivid colors, Luna uses dark browns, grays and greens as the background. Luna’s portrayal of the event is a tangle of people depicted across the canvas and depicted in a storm of brushstrokes. Luna incorporated ambiguities, rapid changes of scale, leaving the precise identity of certain areas difficult to decipher, yet it engages our imaginative participation.
But the entire work is diffused with a vital energy. To render spatial depth, he toned down the color contrasts and intensity. Color, by contrast, has no strong role. But the very tactile presence of the dark strokes create an insistent surface interest. This creates a dramatic understatement, and the human forms are set into exaggerated relief, emphasizing their physical realism. The splendor of the opulent blacks and crimsons, and the raw brushwork full of animation and unexpected jumps, do not alter the monumentality achieved by the composition.
The painting’s inner tension corresponds to its graphic expression; the work appears spontaneous and animated, bursting with action and energy Well balanced elements, verified proportions, well matched postures, and concordant rhythms: those were not an application of set rules, but Luna’s sweet poetics.
Dirty dark clouds and blackish shadows convey a compassion for the common man creating a somber “realism”. The tense, heavy atmosphere is further stressed by the strange glows emanating from behind. It is by temperament, an inner fire, which Luna preferred to interpret his subject, the edifying emotion and passion.
Juan Luna: La Patria En Peligro (Detail)
Juan Luna (1857-1899)
La Patria En Peligro (The French Conflagration)
signed (lower right)
oil on canvas
27” x 51 1/2” (69 cm x 131 cm)
Opening bid: P 8,000,000
Lot 96 of the Leon Gallery auction on 18 February 2017. Please see www.leon-gallery.com for more details.
Provenance:
Ramon J. Fernandez was a prominent businessman, mayor of Manila from 1920 to 1923, and later became a senator. He belonged to the era in Philippine history pregnant with moral virtues. His simple ways belied his stature as a man of good will, unimpeachable character, genuine patriotism and solid achievements. One of the 11 children of Isidro Fernandez, a suger industrialist from Binondo, and Francisca de Castro, he was born on April 12, 1878, in San Miguel, Manila. After obtaining a B.A. from the Ateneo Municipal de Manila in 1898, he pursued an electrical engineering course in London. He was related to Don Jose Bonifacio Roxas, prominent businessman, who helped him in his studies and career.
Don Ramon returned in 1901 and organized the electrical lighting system of the San Miguel Brewery in 1901, where he worked the shipping line of Fernandez Hermanos in 1904. The brothers later purchased the shipping line of the Compañia Maritima in 1912. Ramon took over the management of this line in 1939 following the death, of Jose, who had headed it for 27 years. On March 4, 1920, Gov. Francis Burton Harrison appointed him mayor of Manila. During his term the famous cabinet crisis took place in July, 1923.
He figured in this affair by his refusal to comply with Gov. Leonard Wood’s demand to have American Detective Ray Conley reinstated in the Manila Police Force. In October of that year he ran for senator of the fourth senatorial district, and defeated the Wood-sponsored candidate, Juan Sumulong of the Democratas. He served the remaining two years of the term of Pedro Guevara who had been named Resident Commissioner to the United States. Fernandez was the publisher of such nationalistic periodicals as "El Debate", "La Opinion" and "Pagkakaisa". He married Felisa Hocson in 1908 but they had no children. He was 86 when he died in San Juan, Rizal, on Nov. 10, 1964. (Source: Filipinas Heritage Library Archive)
Augusto “Toto” M. R. Gonzalez shares that “The Ramon Fernandez and Felisa Hocson y Valenzuela residence in San Juan… was set on top of the Pinaglabanan hill on 4 hectares directly across from the Pinaglabanan Church; it had a racecourse for horses; sheep and deer were also raised on the property. The house was hung with large masterpieces by prewar Filipino masters like Fabian de la Rosa, Fernando Amorsolo, and Jorge Pineda.”
Source: Retrato Photo Archive of the Filipinas Heritage Library, Ramon J. Fernandez, Retrieved from URL. (www.retrato.com.ph/list.asp subject=82&heading=&s... searchwhere=&keyword=&pg=17)
Literature: Zoilo M. Galang et al., Encyclopedia of the Philippines (Vol. II – ART), McCullough Printing Company, Manila, 1953, p. 255 (illustrated)
Painted in Paris, "La Patria En Peligro” is all about recalling the weight of a glorious episode in an unnamed country’s history. It can be any country, but what is important is Freedom was the common denominator of revolutionary dreams.
When Luna arrived in Paris in 1885 however, the French Salon was dying, Impressionism has already passed its zenith, and Neo Impressionism, its offshoot, was gaining force. Yet the old French Salon held on to its classicist moorings, thus Luna entered his Spoliarium in the Salon of 1886 set up by the Society of French Artists, where it competed with 2,500 works from all over Europe. That it managed to win a bronze medal of the third class was no mean feat.
In an assessment of his art, historians distinguish two Lunas. One is an informal Luna, who painted for the sheer joy of it. The other is the Luna who projected an imposing public image, the theatrical, grandiose Luna who beat the European Salon aesthetes at their own game.
The variety of figures and the well-developed composition allow one to postulate that the painting was not the master’s first on the historical theme. Nurtured in the academic classical canons then prevalent all over the Western World, Luna followed the conventional steps in attaining professional success.
In 1887, Luna went to Spain to enter in that year's Exposition where two of his historical themed pieces, the La Batalla de Lepanto and the Rendicion de Granada (Surrender of Granada), both won in the exhibition. Earlier in May 1884, he shipped the large canvas of the Spoliarium to Madrid for the year's Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes where he was the first recipient of the three gold medals awarded in the exhibition.
But all of that happened in traditional old Madrid, and in Paris, Luna realized the painful limitations of the style called the Grand Manner sanctioned by the Salon pedants. It was also a groaning from the sheer weight of its sentimental aestheticism and melodramatic clichés. Gladiatorial contests, Roman orgies, Oriental baths, Pygmalion and Galatea... In Paris Luna had misgivings.
The Paris Exposition of 1889 was meant to celebrate a century of progress for France since the Revolution: “To see is to believe,” wrote Luna of it to Javier Gomez... ...by 26 May 1889 however, in his letter to Javier Gomez de la Serna: ...”all historical painting is false, starting with the very concept. And those who think that correct drawing, good composition, brilliant coloring and a lot of adornment are enough to make it valid are mistaken.” This statement, however, does not signify Luna’s break with the academic tradition nor his sympathy with impressionism, as many critics earlier presumed, but rather his leaving towards the more progressive faction of the Salon — “I belong to the dissident Salon” he declared on 5 May 1890 to Rizal. The Salon of 1890, which had Luna so excited, was the first show of a new group, the Societe Nationale des Beaux Arts, which advocated for a slightly more liberal Salon.
The new group felt that the old Societe des Artistes Independants that had seceded in 1884, was too avant garde to be academically competent and disciplined Luna’s choice of subject was influenced by his sympathy for members of the salon who were members of the Socialist Party of France.
These socialist artists had adopted the Courbet dictum that the ordinary happenings of everyday life were as valid a subject for art as great historical events; and in their vision of art as a medium for exposing political and social evils they espoused the Daumier doctrine though not his caricaturing style. Socialist art would not gain ground as Luna expected, but it would be effective in politicizing the masses in other countries such as Russia.
With the rich dark grey to black tones, the influence of Courbet, who advocated drawni g subjects from one’s own time is manifest in "La Patria En Peligro". With its elements of Romanticism, his style opens up comparisons to Delacroix, Rembrandt and Daumier. In the same way that Daumier’s “The Uprising” depicts a moment of revolutionary uproar in the streets, with people defined by indeterminate surface treatments against a scumbled background and at enough distance to diminish detail, Luna paints a sweep of space, totally avoiding lavish detail and animate it with human activity, corporeal but somewhat vague.
In the same way that Rembrandt’s “Nightwatch” made effective use of light and shadow (tenebrism) and the perception of motion in what would have been a static military portrait. Tenebrism, from the Italian, tenebroso (murky) is a style of painting using violent contrasts of light and dark, and where darkness becomes a dominating feature of the image. Yet the rich, dark palette is broken with delicate yet dramatic passages of white areas.
In "La Patria En Peligro", Luna did not give emphasis on precise drawing that characterized the academic art earlier in his career, and instead gave a new prominence to freely brushed color using larger, looser brushstrokes and less precise lines. In the same way that Delacroix’s “Liberty leading the People” depicted Liberty as both an allegorical goddess-figure and a robust woman of the people, "La Patria En Peligro" features a robust woman holding a child sufficiently infused with allegory. Some characters are represented more distinctly than others, and the three or four figures who are more distinctly identified are supplemented by almost as many subordinate figures, included by Luna for pictorial effect. The barely distinguishable human figures unleash elementary and destructive passions.
The monochromatically dark tonality, kindled here and there by flashes of color, adds power. Abandoning his use of vivid colors, Luna uses dark browns, grays and greens as the background. Luna’s portrayal of the event is a tangle of people depicted across the canvas and depicted in a storm of brushstrokes. Luna incorporated ambiguities, rapid changes of scale, leaving the precise identity of certain areas difficult to decipher, yet it engages our imaginative participation.
But the entire work is diffused with a vital energy. To render spatial depth, he toned down the color contrasts and intensity. Color, by contrast, has no strong role. But the very tactile presence of the dark strokes create an insistent surface interest. This creates a dramatic understatement, and the human forms are set into exaggerated relief, emphasizing their physical realism. The splendor of the opulent blacks and crimsons, and the raw brushwork full of animation and unexpected jumps, do not alter the monumentality achieved by the composition.
The painting’s inner tension corresponds to its graphic expression; the work appears spontaneous and animated, bursting with action and energy Well balanced elements, verified proportions, well matched postures, and concordant rhythms: those were not an application of set rules, but Luna’s sweet poetics.
Dirty dark clouds and blackish shadows convey a compassion for the common man creating a somber “realism”. The tense, heavy atmosphere is further stressed by the strange glows emanating from behind. It is by temperament, an inner fire, which Luna preferred to interpret his subject, the edifying emotion and passion.