Deux Souers (Two Sisters)
signed (upper left) and dated Paris, 1884
oil on board
8 1/4" x 10" (21 cm x 25 cm)

PROVENANCE:Private Collection, Spain


An Ilustrado Rarity from the Paterno Circle of Friends by LISA GUERRERO NAKPILLike Pedro Paterno, Rafael Enriquez was among the ilustrados who found their metier in Madrid and Paris. Born in Naga, then called Nueva Caceres, he would next take the familiar route of study at the Ateneo Municipal and then the Universidad de Santo Tomas, both in Manila. He also enrolled in the Academia de Dihujo y Pintura, then under the direction of Don Agustin Saez, where he had his first artistic training, according to the biographer E.A. Manuel. He would next sail to Spain to study law and like Hidalgo, once he had discharged his familial duties would enter the world of fine arts at the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid. He would, however, find the French capital and its more libertarian atmosphere more conductive to his art. In 1879 he would move to Paris and stay for the next eight years, the same period in which this work at hand was created. (His address at 141 Avenue de Villiers, today in the 17th Arr. is shown at the reverse of the painting.) Enriquez would become a noted portraitist and his sitters would include European aristocracy such as the Marques de Rivera, the Marques del Togo del Valle as well as the Duque de Banns, painter, in no small part as a result of marrying into their circle. He would continue his friendships in the Spanish cultural landscape including with Pedro Paterno. His work “La Lealtad Filipina” would be featured in the Exposicion General de las Yslas Filipinas of 1887 which Paterno would help organize; and a certificate of excellence for the work would in fact be among ‘The Ilustrado Trove’ from the collection of Don Pedro, Lot 72. By then Enriquez had moved to London to stay with Antonio Regidor, a fellow lawyer who had been exiled with Paterno’s father after the Cavite Mutiny of 1872 and whose brother Manuel was Pedro Paterno’s brother-in-law. The work at hand is not one of his grand portraits of bejeweled women but a wonderful scene of women at home : Two sisters are intent on the art of sewing (and darning, as frugal women do). Their placid but intent expressions catch the light of a lamp; a sewing box sits on the table as do skeins of thread and a pair of scissors; a second garment in feminine pink awaits their tending. The atmosphere is illuminated by the carmine color of the striped tablecloth in a bold color reminiscent of the Florentine masters. It’s a beguiling scene of life lived at home in the 1880s.