Three studies of Filipinos: Going to mass; Manila Mestizo – Spanish 1/2 Caste; and A Mestiza

The women in the first and third drawings wear the traditional pares (the combination of skirts designed to satisfy the Catholic dress code), tapis (overskirt) covering the brightly coloured saya (long skirt), and the delicate and transparent embroidered pañuelo (mantle), usually made from pineapple cloth, and worn over an opaque striped blouse. One wears a veil and the other carries a silk umbrella. In the second drawing, Lozano shows a 'Manila Mestizo' (a local man of mixed Spanish, Chinese and Filipino descent) in Filipino dress. He wears a transparent embroidered striped shirt over an undershirt, a bowler hat (from England), and holds a cane. 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). The orange and white shirt appears again in one of Lozano's sheets of Filipino dandies in the Flebus album, sold in these rooms, 14 July 1995, lot 112, and appears again, with the same cream top hat, in one of the three tipos del Pais sold in these rooms, 14 Dec. 2017, lot 152.