Jose Honorato Lozano (c.1815 - c.1885)

THE JEAN FLEBUS MANILA ALBUM 'Much of the river scenery is such as Claude would revel in, and high indeed would be the artist's merit who could give perpetuity to such colouring' Sir John Bowring, A Visit to the Philippine Islands, 1859 MANILA AND THE PHILIPPINES TO 1850 The archipelago of islands in the south-east of Asia known today as the Philippines was originally populated by Malays and incorporated in the vast Indonesian empire called Madjapahit. The islands were visited by Indonesian, Indian, Arab and Chinese traders from around 100 AD and by the 12th Century the Chinese had established a permanent presence. In 1521 Magellan sailed westward across the Pacific (the Portuguese had barred the shorter course via the Cape of Good Hope) to open up a trade route with the Indies and discovered the islands for Spain, landing at Samar Island in March (he was killed by a Mactan chieftain seven weeks later). The Spanish took formal possession in 1565 when the conquistadore Miguel Lopez de Legazpi gained a foothold at Cebu and claimed the islands in the name of Philip II. The Spaniards moved north and defeated the Muslim chieftain Sulayman and took over his fortress at the mouth of the Pasig River on the sheltered harbour which would become known as Manila Bay. Legazpi founded the walled city of Manila in June 1571 and the conquistadores with friars in tow fanned out to secure land and convert the natives. A Spanish governor-general responsible to the Viceroy of Mexico presided over the walled city (Intramuros) and the adjoining territories. Chinese trading fleets fuelled the welfare of the colony, the Spanish then trading their purchases with Mexico on the annual 'Manila Galleon' in return for Mexican silver. Trade out of Manila, which had been exclusively with Spain by way of Mexico, and then monopolised by the Royal Company of the Philippines, was gradually opened up from the late 18th Century as the colony sought to expand its economy. Cash crops (sugar, tobacco, indigo and hemp) were introduced and the port of Manila opened to international trade from 1834. Manila itself had its origins in trading communities which formed on both sides of the Pasig River in the 5th Century. Merchants visited from Arabia, Siam, Borneo, Malacca, Java, Sumatra, India, Japan and China and exchanged silks, porcelains and other exotic wares for local products such as jute, gold, pearls, honey and betlenuts. By the middle of the 16th Century Muslims of royal descent with their origins in Borneo had made Maynilad into a pallisaded city state under Rijal Sulayman. Legazpi seized Maynilad from Sulayman in 1571 and founded Spanish Manila in the same year, constructing a walled and moated inner-city (Intramuros) for the Castilian ruling classes. Outside the walls neighbouring districts sprang up, occupied by the natives (called Indios by the Spanish), mestizos, Chinese, Spanish commoners and other foreigners. The Chinese, the commercial force in the colony, lived and traded in Parian neighbouring Intramuros which soon became eclipsed by the growth of Binondo, the Christian Chinese commerical district across the Pasig which grew rich when the colony traded with Acapulco and continued to flourish in the 19th Century when trade was emancipated, filling with shops and cigar factories. Intramuros and neighbouring boroughs, now termed Metro Manila and with a population of over ten million, bears little resemblance to the city depicted by Lozano in the mid-nineteenth century. The Spanish ceded the islands to the United States after the Spanish-American conflict over Cuba in 1899 and its path to independence was interrupted by the Japanese occupation during the Second World War. Much of the old city of Manila was destroyed by American bombardment when MacArthur retook the Philippines in 1944. EMILE NYSSENS, A BELGIAN TRADER IN MANILA Nyssens would visit Manila three times, in 1844, 1846 and 1870-71. The son of a Belgian businessman, he set out his ideals early in life: 'Mon idéal était de pouvoir acheter des marchandises sur les lieux lointains de production et les vendre sur les lieux de consommation; mais on me traitait alors d'Utopiste parce que je n'avais aucun capital et que mon père ne pouvait rien me donner, ayant à peine de quoi élever convenablement sa nombreuse famille ... J'avais lu quelques livres donnant des descriptions de voyages lointains et de commerce d'exporatation et d'importation. Je rêvais de voyager par mer dans toutes les parties du monde. Mais comment faire ...?' (E. Nyssens, Souvenirs de ma vie 1815-1906, Brussels, 1907, pp. 10-11) At twenty-eight, and after a few false starts, he joined his uncle's ship the Schelde at Antwerp as a purser. The ship sailed in November 1843 laden with Belgian goods for sale in Singapore, China and Manila. The voyage took them to Manila via the Cape of Good Hope, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macao and Canton. In the China trade ports they stocked up with tea, ginger and other 'objets de fantaisie de Chine complètement inconnus en Belgique'. In Manila they were received by Mr Bolton of Ker & Co. and procured sugar, Manila hemp and leather, and returned to Antwerp with their cargo after a voyage of fourteen and a half months. Nyssens showed himself to be adept in the disposal of their exotic cargo and was taken on as supercargo for a return trip to the East on the Schelde in October 1845. They traded again on the route out, buying rice and peppercorns in Singapore, and tea, cinnamon, ginger, silks, porcelains, china and objets de fantaisie in Canton. In Manila they were received by the Belgian consul and Nyssens had a chance encounter with a director of the local firm of Machea Menchacatorre & Co. and discussed purchasing tobacco. At this time the growth and distribution of tobacco in the Philippines was monopolised by the Spanish government and exploited as their primary source of revenue. Tobacco leaf was warehoused in Manila, bought and sold at prices fixed by the government, and distributed to the large local cigar manufacturers. Nyssens foresaw that a quantity might be sold in the future for export to raise additional revenue and noted that the monopoly had left no-one expert in the market and classification of tobacco. He left the Philippines in 1846 with contacts in place who promised to advise him from Manila on the possibility of buying tobacco should the opportunity arise. The Schelde returned to Antwerp in 1847 and disgorged an exotic cargo that made Nyssens and his colleagues a small fortune. With his newly acquired funds, he founded Nyssens Frères, a tobacco and cigar company, with his brother and another company, Gyssels, Moris & Nyssens to sell Chinese wares. Nyssens Frères set out to import leaf tobacco and trade began in 1854 when the government in Manila, short of revenue, offered assorted grades of leaf tobacco for export sale. Nyssens's contacts at Machea Menchacatorre & Co in Manila (with whom the Belgian firm had already traded cigars, coffee, sugar and hemp since Nyssens's return to Belgium in 1847) proceeded to buy the tobacco in partnership with Nyssens Frères and the quality of the leaf yielded a 50 profit, consolidating the family fortune. Nyssens travelled to Manila again in 1869 to advise on further significant purchases of tobacco and extended his visit to two years after the 1869 crop proved disappointing. This time he sailed via Suez, Aden, Ceylon, Penang, Singapore, and Hong Kong, arriving in Manila in February 1870. On his arrival he noted the development of the city over the twenty-four years since his last visit: 'nous entrâmes dans la rivière Pasig qui traverse la ville de Manille ... Sur les bords de la rivière je vis beaucoup de constructions qui n'y étaient pas lors de mon voyage précédent, en 1846' (E. Nyssens, op. cit., p. 84). In partnership with the local company Aguirre & Co. and with another Belgian trader Jean de Man, Nyssens proceeded to buy a large proportion of the 1870 crop, enjoyed an extended tour of the islands, and returned to Belgium by way of China, Japan and the United States. In 1876 the Spanish government finally abolished the monopoly on the tobacco trade and foreign companies began to establish cigar factories in Manila. Nyssens's fifth son George went out to Manila in 1881 to work with an old colleague of his father, Jean Hens, who had established his firm J.P. Hens in Manila which later became La Hensiana and after Hens's death Meerkamp & Nyssens, though George himself died prematurely in 1893 and the company was then liquidated. Emile Nyssens died in Lier in 1906, in the house of his son-in-law Réné Flebus, having enjoyed a lucrative career and leaving his family a considerable fortune, much of which would be lost in Russian railway bonds on the outbreak of the Russian revolution. The present album of watercolours by Lozano was probably acquired by Nyssens on his first or second trip to Manila in 1844 and 1846 as the fourth watercolour in the album ('El nuevo paseo de Magellanes junto al puente de Barcas') shows and describes the 'pontoon bridge' which would be destroyed by the earthquake in 1863. The new bridge to be called the Puente de España would have been under construction when Nyssens visited in 1870. The watercolours were acquired loose by Nyssens and bound into the present album in Antwerp and have remained in Nyssens's family in Belgium since their acquisition in Manila in the nineteenth century. JOSE HONORATO LOZANO A TRANSITIONAL PAINTER IN MANILA IN THE MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY Lozano was born in Manila, the son of the lighthouse keeper at Manila Bay and grew up in Sampaloc just outside Intramuros. He was active as a painter in the 1840s (a commission for Charles D. Mugford, an American Captain who visited Manila in 1845, is in the Peabody Museum, Salem, Massachusetts) and was remarked on as 'a watercolourist without rival' by a local commentator Rafael Diaz Arenas as early as 1850. A number of his early commissions in the 1840s and 1850s show him as a practitioner of the unusual art form known as letres y figuras in which a patron's name is composed by elaborate arrangements of figures (tipos del Pais) surrounded by vignettes of scenes in Manila. This art form may derive loosely from the work of medieval illuminators (Lozano himself was described as an 'illuminator' by Dominador Castaneda in Art in the Philippines in 1964) and was popular with other artists in the Philippines in the nineteenth century. He also produced more conventional studies of local types and costumes, as with the letres y figuras, to supply the demand for souvenirs of the then exotic Manila for visiting traders and government officials. These studies fall broadly in line with the popular genre dubbed costumbrismo practised by Spanish colonial painters in the mid-nineteenth century in Latin America 'covering the activities and typical dress of every sort of inhabitant, from urban upper-class society to those of the barrios, from marketplace, military camp, cattle range, portside loading dock to frontier forest and jungle.' (S.L. Catlin (inter alia), Art in Latin America, the Modern Era, 1820-1980 (exhibition catalogue), London 1989, pp. 48-9). He is also recorded as working in oils and was commissioned by the Spanish government to depict episodes from the history of the colony to be displayed during the fiesta in the district of Santa Cruz in Manila in 1848 and Arenas recalls further historical genre commissions. His work, encompassing letres y figuras, Tipos del Pais, landscapes and genre has marked him out as an important transitional figure between the miniaturist art of Damian Domingo and Justiniano Asuncion and the fully-fledged genre paintings of Lorenzo Guerrero and Felipe Rojas. Lozano's patrons in Manila included Don Jose Feced y Temprado, magistrate of the Real Audencia of Manila, Doña Ameurfina Goquinco in Binondo and William P. Pierce, the United States consul as well as visitors such as Mugford, an American businessman and Emile Nyssens, the Belgian trader who acquired the present album. Nyssens's album is not dated, nor is the commission mentioned in the Belgian's autobiography. Nevertheless, the depiction of the puente de Barcas which was destroyed by the great earthquake of 1863 suggests an ante quem and thus the probability that Nyssens acquired the watercolours on one of his first two visits in the 1840s rather than in 1870-71. A more precise dating is suggested by the titles of the third and fourth views (La nueva fabrica de cigarros de Meisic and El nuevo paseo de Magellanes jundo al puente de Barcas) The Property of M. Jean Flebus

Details

Jose Honorato Lozano (c.1815 - c.1885)

Manila and its Environs; an Album of twenty-five Watercolours depicting Scenes in and around Manila:

1. La romeria á la fiesta de Antipolo
2. Vista de la entrada del Rio Pasig
3. La nueva fabrica de Cigarros de Meisic
4. El nuevo paseo de Magellanes junto al puente de Barcas
5. Vista cerca del pueblo de Taguig (Rio Pasig)
6. Viviendas de Indios Monteses
7. Un entierro
8. Estudiantes de las diferentes universidades
9. Lavanderas
10. Indias beatas
11. Lecheros
12. Mestizas en trage de paseo
13. En trage de ir á Misa
14. Yndios limpiando el palay
15. Cuadrilleros (éspecie de guardia Civil para depensa de los pueblos)
16. Mestizos en trage de fiesta
17. Yndios examinando los espolones de un gallo
18. Vista en una plaza
19. Una vista en el rio Pasig
20. Una fonda en un Camino
21. En un Camino
22. Yndios jugando á la sipa (pelota de Caña)
23. Jugando al panguingui
24. Un cuadro
25. Un preso conducido por un cuadrillero y el gobernadorcillo

twenty-one signed lower right 'Jose Honorato Lozano', one signed 'Jose Hozano', two signed 'Jose H. Lozano' and one signed 'Jose Lozano'; watercolour with bodycolour
each sheet 9¾ x 13½in. (247 x 343mm.)
or 13½ x 9¾in. (343 x 247mm.)

with a nineteenth century photograph of a residence in Manila and a key to the watercolours, the leather bound album with embossed title on the cover 'ALBUM DE MANILLE ET SES ENVIRONS'
10 x 14in. (254 x 514mm.) overall

Eighteen illustrated

Provenance

Gérard-Théodore-Emile Nyssens (1815-1906) and by descent to his great-great-grandson, Jean Flebus, the present owner.

Lot Essay

DESCRIPTIONS OF THE WATERCOLOURS

1. Outing to the Antipolo fiesta
Antipolo in the hills outside Manila is the home of a holy icon carved by Mexican craftsmen which first gained stature after safely crossing the Pacific in 1626, leading the Spanish voyagers on the galleon to call her Virgen de la Paz y Buen Viaje. The icon was first enshrined by Franciscans in a barrio on the plains and transferred by Jesuits to the present hillside shrine in the parish church of Antipolo in 1632. Since then Antipolo has been the site of Maytime pilgrimages, giving Manila's populace a traditional spring excursion into the country

2. The mouth of the Pasig river
The City of Old Manila ('Intra Muros') was surrounded on all sides by water: on the west by the sea, and to the north by the Pasig river, while moats connected with the river flanked the east and south. This view shows Manila harbour and bay with Fort Santiago on the extreme left, with the lighthouse on the right and the Mariveles mountains beyond. Under the Spanish the port at first traded exclusively with Acapulco and Mexico, was opened with restrictions to foreign vessels in 1789 and without restrictions in 1834, when the privileges of the Royal Company of the Philippines expired and the traffic in the port grew dramatically. All of the principal warehouses were on the Pasig where ships could deliver and receive their cargoes direct. The chief articles of export were Manila hemp, sugar, cigars and coffee

3. The new cigar factory in Meisic (Chinatown)
Tobacco was introduced to the Philippines by the Spanish and its production and sale monopolised by the colonial government to support their revenues from the 1780s. The abolition of the monopoly in 1876 was followed by the construction of a number of privately owned cigar factories in the commercial district

4. The new Magellan's Drive alongside the puente de Barcas
Magellan's Drive on the Pasig, like the Luneta alongside the old sea wall, was a popular promenade in the old city. The column seen rising above the candle trees is Magellan's Monument first erected outside Puerta Isabel II and later moved to the back of the Intendencia Building, after part of the wall was levelled in 1904. It was destroyed in the Battle of Manila in the Second World War (J.C. Laya and E.B. Gatbonton, Intramuros of Memory, Manila, 1983, p. 55). Through the trees on the left is the Pasig river, Binondo church in the commercial district and the puente de Barcas (pontoon bridge). The pontoon bridge existed from 1632 until it was destroyed by the great earthquake of 1863. A new stone bridge was opened to traffic in 1875 and called the Puente de España (becoming Jones Bridge under the American occupation and latterly Quintin Paredes after a Filipino parliamentarian)

5. View near the town of Taguig on the Pasig river
Taguig lies near the source of the Pasig, the Laguna de Bayo, about thirteen miles from Manila. Lozano shows the ferries which rowed
upstream from Manila to the town, and on the banks coconut and betlenut trees, a bamboo grove, acacia and taro plants with the Antipolo mountains beyond

6. Huts of the mountain Indians
The natives of the Mountain Provinces of northern Luzon have remained at a remove from lowland colonial history, protected by their highland seclusion and consist of five major ethnic groups, the Benguets, Bontocs, Ifugaos, Kalingas and Apayaos. Lozano shows the natives with their boars and a goat and, amidst the coconut trees, their palm leaf and bamboo huts on stilts with a granary in the centre, probably storing rice, the stilts threaded through pots to stop rats climbing up. The natives are possibily Benguets from the Western Cordilleras who grow rice, coffee, and vegetables and raise livestock on their terrraces

7. A burial
Merchants are shown in the foreground selling fighting cocks and bales of cloth while a priest administers the last rites with mourners in the background

8. Students from different colleges

9. Washerwomen

10. Pious women
Lozano shows their costume, black capes emblematic of their status covering their heads and over their pares

11. Milksellers
Milksellers in Manila carried milk in bamboo pitchers hung on sticks over their shoulders, the women traditionally bearing the pitchers on their heads

12. Mestizas promenading
The women are shown wearing pares, the combination of skirts designed to satisfy the Catholic dress code, the tapis (overskirt) covering the brightly coloured saya (long skirt). The delicate and transparent embroidered mantle or pañuelo, usually made from pineapple cloth, is worn over an opaque striped blouse. The frontal figure holds a silk parasol: 'When good materials are used, the dress of the native and mestiza women is very pretty, and it is so comfortable that many of their European sisters adopt it during leisure hours at home. It consists of a thin camisa or waist, with huge flowing sleeves; a more or less highly embroidered white chemise, showing through the camisa; a large pañuelo or kerchief folded about the neck, with ends crossed and pinned on the breast; a gaily coloured skirt with long train; and a square of black cloth, the tapis, drawn tightly around the body from waist to knees. Camisa and pañuelo are sometimes made of an expensive and beautiful piña or pineapple silk, and in that case are hansomely embroidered. More often, unfortunately, the kerchief is of cotton and the waist of Manila hemp. Stockings are not worn, as a rule, and the slippers which take the place of shoes have no heels, and no uppers except for a narrow strip of leather over the toes. It is an art to walk in the chinelas without losing them off, but the native and mestiza belles continue to dance in them, and feel greatly chagrined if they lose their foot-gear in the operation.' (D.C. Worcester, The Philippine Islands and their Peoples, London, 1898, pp. 32-3)

13. Going to Mass
A middle-class couple are shown in the formal dress worn to mass, the woman in the traditional pares with the addition of a veil and the man's dress including a fine transparent embroidered shirt over an undershirt, holding a cane and wearing a bowler hat (from England)
14. Indians preparing rice

15. Officers of the Civil Guard

16. Mestizos going to the fiesta
Lozano shows four wealthy Mestizos (local men of mixed Spanish, Chinese and Filipino descent) in their celebrated dress. Such local dandies and their attire fascinated nineteenth century visitors to the colony: 'the shirts worn by the wealthy are often made of an extremely expensive home-made material, woven from the fibres of the pine-apple or the banana. Some of them are ornamented with silk stripes, some are plain. They are also frequently manufactured entirely of Jusi (Chinese floret silk), in which case they will not stand washing, and can only be worn once.' (F. Jagor, Travels in the Philippines, London, 1875, pp. 31-2); 'One occasionally sees a native, and more frequently a Mestizo (man of mixed descent), sweltering in European costume of exaggerated style, his feet encased in pointed patent-leather shoes and his head topped by a black Derby hat. The hat is the most prized portion of the civilized native's costume.' (D.C. Worcester, op. cit., p. 32)

17. Filipinos examining the fighting cockerel's claws
Cockfighting was and continues to be the most popular sport in the Philippines. Every town had a cockpit (sabungan) and crowds were drawn to the contests on public holidays wagering thousands of pesos with the pit-side bookmakers (Kristos). Most Filipino men would have had their own fighting cockerels

18. A scene in town
Lozano shows a group of Chinese and Filipino street vendors with two Chinese merchants dressed in silks. To their right a street vendor from the Gunao bakery (bread was introduced to the Philippines by the Chinese) and on the extreme right a Chinaman at a stall selling dishes of rice. The two women in the centre both wear scapulars, religious devotional plaques

19. A scene on the Pasig river
A fisherman in the foreground is shown with a fish trap and his woven bag to store the fish tied to his belt. On the right a farmer drives his large Water Buffalo (Carabao) hauling a large woven grain container. Taro plants (a wild root vegetable) line the riverbank

20. A foodstall on a street

21. A street scene
To the right of the stall, Lozano depicts a Mestiza in full costume, wearing the pares with a mantle (pañuela) draped over her shoulder and a wide brimmed sunshade (salacot). To her right a couple on ponies, the popular local mode of transport

22. Filipinos playing football
Lozano shows two Mestizas in the foreground and five young men beyond playing football in a street lined with local flora: sugarcane, betlenut trees and a taro plant. The football was woven from coconut leaves (pelota de Caña). The game was clearly popular in Manila. A drawing titled 'Foot ball in Manila' by Charles Wirgman was reproduced in the Illustrated London News, 28 November 1858, p. 529 and the artist wrote: 'I send you a sketch of a game of football, at which the Indians are very great. They stand in a circle, and with their feet keep up the ball for any length of time. The ball is made of wickerwork and is like a round basket; the game is never to let it touch the ground after it is once up, and always to manage to strike it with the feet. In England, football is one of your oldest games; but I have never seen it played with such dexterity as in Manila.' For Wirgman's original sketch see Christie's Swire, Hong Kong, 26 September 1989, lot 888

23. A game of panguingui
A large group of Filipino men and women are shown at cards (panguingui) around a table. To their right an ordinary taxi drawn by a pony (calesa) framed by two banana trees

24. A scene
On the left a cook turns a suckling pig (lechon) on a spit, a traditional accompaniment for celebrations in the Philippines. On the right a woman sits smoking a fat Manila cigar while another prepares a betlenut chew beneath a trellis of hanging gourds. The round tree behind the cook is a mango tree

25. A prisoner led off by a policeman and a councillor

We are grateful to Mr. Jun Terra for his help in preparing the above descriptions

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