𝐋𝐀𝐕𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐒 𝐁𝐘 𝐅𝐄𝐑𝐍𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐎 𝐀𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐋𝐎

Lavanderas painting shows what Amorsolo can do when it plays on the water. By the slightest of freehand indications, the green foliage on the opposite bank are about as “Impressionistic” as Amorsolo ever got. The woman standing up and the woman beating the laundry are as typical as Amorsolo ever painted women for genre themes, they are, typically long-limbed, long stemmed, and glowing with good health and temper. 

Amorsolo creates a casual, informal atmosphere, avoiding the posed look, by painting the women some with their backs turned to the viewer and by shadowing their faces. The water in the paddies also reflects the sun and the sky with the large cloud masses, enlarging the overall space and enhancing the greeness of the rural space.

Amorsolo had always been obdurantly resistant to the Modernist shockwaves from America. These works show him more entrenched than ever, not only in the 19th century tradition but in a Contemporary manifestation of it. 

Alfredo Roces may have written an article about Amorsolo in 1975 entitled “Fernando Amorsolo, Recurring Themes and Subtle Changes” yet, the growth of scholarship on the master has been astounding. Genre avoided the exotic for the familiar, yet the passion for genre remains strong among all generations of Filipino connoisseurs and collectors in general. Amorsolo had developed his own rustic vision strong enough to hold its own, against even those Philippine art movements which tried to escape from it.

It captures the steady, unhurried pace of rural life, removing the viewer from the fast, hectic pace lived outside of the countryside, reminding us of the beauty and simplicity of everyday actions and experiences. Amorsolo is a dedicated visual rambler of the countryside, an artist who passionately experiences the terrain through which he hikes.

As a result, his paintings reflect the very intensity and directness of his love of nature, and are dedicated to a romantic style of honesty in recording it. The nude woman facing the child is by itself a fascinating work of art, and may be the only academic exception to the consensus that Amorsolo goes outside of academic canons by posing figures not in the studio where light could be controlled, but in the outdoors, under the shifting light of the heavens. With his backlighting technique, he even catches in paint the effect of bright sunlight.

Amorsolo’s canvases are sparsely populated, but once everything had been arranged, Amorsolo would make a detailed drawing of every human figure in the pose the composition dictated. Amorsolo’s works are not the result of any studio defined, culturally filtered notion of landscape as such, but reflects instead a very particular kind of visual vocabulary of forms, we see and feel the light of the midday sun, we perceive the cool, onrushing river, even the wetness of the clothes being washed. If the composition doesn’t have Amorsolo’s all encompassing skies, it shows great skill at showing light reflected from the rushing water. The river is a movement of rich shades of green and ochres. Everywhere life is expressed in light.

FERNANDO AMORSOLO

Fernando Cueto Amorsolo (Fernando Amorsolo y Cueto) born in; (May 30, 1892 – April 24, 1972) was one of the most important artists in the history of painting in the Philippines. Amorsolo was a portraitist and painter of rural Philippine landscapes. He is popularly known for his craftsmanship and mastery in the use of light.

Amorsolo was born on May 30, 1892, in Paco, Manila. Don Fabián de la Rosa, his mother's cousin, was also a Filipino painter. At the age of 13, Amorsolo became an apprentice to De la Rosa, who would eventually become the advocate and guide to Amorsolo's painting career. During this time, Amorsolo's mother embroidered to earn money, while Amorsolo helped by selling water color postcards to a local bookstore for 10 centavos each. His brother, Pablo Amorsolo, was also a painter. Amorsolo's first success as a young painter came in 1908, when his painting Leyendo el periódico took second place at the Bazar Escolta, a contest organized by the Asociacion Internacional de Artistas. Between 1909 and 1914, he enrolled at the Art School of the Liceo de Manila.

After graduating from the Liceo, he entered the University of the Philippines' School of Fine Arts, where De la Rosa worked at the time. During college, Fernando Amorsolo's primary influences were the Spanish people court painter Diego Velázquez, John Singer Sargent, Anders Zorn, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, but mostly his contemporary Spanish masters Joaquín Sorolla Bastida and Ignacio Zuloaga. Amorsolo's most notable work as a student at the Liceo was his painting of a young man and a young woman in a garden, which won him the first prize in the art school exhibition during his graduation year. To make money during school, Amorsolo joined competitions and did illustrations for various Philippine publications, including Severino Reyes’ first novel in Tagalog language, Parusa ng Diyos , Iñigo Ed. Regalado's Madaling Araw, as well as illustrations for editions of the Pasion. Amorsolo graduated with medals from the University of the Philippines in 1914.

Amorsolo is best known for his illuminated landscapes, which often portrayed traditional Filipino customs, culture, fiestas and occupations. His pastoral works presented "an imagined sense of nationhood in counterpoint to American colonial rule" and were important to the formation of Filipino national identity. He was educated in the classical tradition and aimed "to achieve his Philippine version of the Greek ideal for the human form. In his paintings of Filipina women, Amorsolo rejected Western ideals of beauty in favor of Filipino ideals and was fond of basing the faces of his subjects on members of his family.

"The women I paint should have a rounded face, not of the oval type often presented to us in newspapers and magazine illustrations. The eyes should be exceptionally lively, not the dreamy, sleepy type that characterizes the Mongolian. The nose should be of the blunt form but firm and strongly marked. So the ideal Filipina beauty should not necessarily be white complexioned, nor of the dark brown color of the typical Malayan, but of the clear skin or fresh colored type which we often witness when we met a blushing girl."

    FERNANDO AMORSOLO (1892-1972)

        Lavanderas

            1967 

            - Signed F Amorsolo in English and dated 1967

            - Oil on canvas

            - 66.5 x 86.5cm (26 1/4 x 34 1/8in).

        

            Footnotes:

        Provenance

        Corporate Collection, Houston, USA

        

        This work is accompanied with an certificate of authenticity signed by Sylvia Amorsolo Lazo and Fernando Amorsolo Lazo dated 25 February 2015 and numbered 688.

HOW IT AFFECTED US, HUMANS IN AMIDST OF PANDEMIC.

In this time of pandemic, washing your clothes is hygiene, and it’s important especially nowadays the crisis is ongoing.

Not particularly related in spreading diseases like COVID-19, but rather, it simply shows that humans must take care of themselves even if it’s hard and difficult at the same time. Very challenging, yes. But we need to know that we are responsible of taking care ourselves, as well as for the others.

How? And Why? Maybe if we are taking good care of ourselves, we are also taking care of our surroundings. Not just that, but mostly for the other people we encounter each day. Washing your clothes oftenly is a good proper way to take care of yourself.

Just like the painting, even if it’s hard to wash your clothes manually in the lake, and no sufficient things for you to support, it’s very hard to do that in the said time. But nowadays, we are now technologically and improved today, so things get much easier than it was before.

Imagine, manually washing your clothes in an open lake? That’s a difficult thing to do, actually. That is what the painting represents of. Even if its hard, it’s tiring, we must be responsible of everything and life just keeps going on.