Lot Essay
Since 1900s genre art has become popular in Philippines; many Americans officers and officials of commercial houses toured the Philippines countryside and took pictures of typical daily scenes like planting rice, plowing, palay harvesting and pounding. The interest and appreciation of daily rural scenes was quite naturally translated into demand for genre painitngs.
Developing simultaneously was the growing need of defining an unique Filipino identity in face of rapid Americanization. Hence the idealized country-side with the ideal Filipino beauty were tools used by artists to exert nationalistic sentiment.
As the two developing trends converged thereby creating a bustling art market for genre painting; Amorsolo moved to the centre stage as he painted his first "serious genre" in 1922. It was rice planting scene"The setting is the rice fields on the eastern side of the San Juan River. ... ... The key point of interest of the painting is a female planter, in the near central foreground, who had just straightened up. The morning sun plays on the bent backs of other planters, whose images are mirrored on the irrigated rice paddies." (Alfredo R. Roces, Amorsolo, Philippines, p.45.)
The similarity between the present lot and the described one is striking and indeed the composition was one of the most popular and well known of Amorsolo's work. One of the preparatory sketch illustrated in Roces' book (ibid, p.157) showed that the artist had made numerous studies of the classic scene which despite of its repetition has never failed to "record the praises of the people of his land". (Ibid, p.45).
Developing simultaneously was the growing need of defining an unique Filipino identity in face of rapid Americanization. Hence the idealized country-side with the ideal Filipino beauty were tools used by artists to exert nationalistic sentiment.
As the two developing trends converged thereby creating a bustling art market for genre painting; Amorsolo moved to the centre stage as he painted his first "serious genre" in 1922. It was rice planting scene"The setting is the rice fields on the eastern side of the San Juan River. ... ... The key point of interest of the painting is a female planter, in the near central foreground, who had just straightened up. The morning sun plays on the bent backs of other planters, whose images are mirrored on the irrigated rice paddies." (Alfredo R. Roces, Amorsolo, Philippines, p.45.)
The similarity between the present lot and the described one is striking and indeed the composition was one of the most popular and well known of Amorsolo's work. One of the preparatory sketch illustrated in Roces' book (ibid, p.157) showed that the artist had made numerous studies of the classic scene which despite of its repetition has never failed to "record the praises of the people of his land". (Ibid, p.45).