Mango Vendor
signed and dated 1933 (lower right)
oil on canvas
18 1/2" x 13" (47 cm x 33 cm)

León Gallery wishes to thank Mrs. Sylvia Amorsolo-Lazo for confirming the authenticity of this lot.
PROVENANCE: Private collection, USA



WRITE UP:
The 1930s encapsulate Fernando Amorsolo’s “Golden Period.” Amorsolo welcomed the prosperous decade showered with much acclaim. In 1931, he became the Philippine representative to the Paris Exposition, exhibiting his work “The Conversion of the Filipinos,” which art critic Alfredo Roces describes in his monograph on the artist as one of Amorsolo’s “first themes, one which became a favorite over the years. (variations of the theme were “The First Mass,” “The Baptism of Humabon,” etc.).” From 1933 to 1934, Amorsolo worked on the murals “The Dance” and “The History of Music” for Juan Arellano’s brainchild, the iconic Manila Metropolitan Theatre. At the onset of the decade, Amorsolo had become the most famous Filipino painter of his time and certainly the most acclaimed, prolific, and sought-after. In this charming work at hand from Amorsolo’s golden age, we come face-to-face with one of Amorsolo’s earliest depictions of his bustling market scene and one of the earliest iterations of the “Mango Vendors” or “Fruit Vendors” subject to come to market. Roces writes in the Amorsolo monograph: “Through the thirties, Amorsolo remained highly imaginative and active, periodically going outdoors, painting and seeking other subjects… Stimulated by the nostalgia around him for the changing country life, he painted rural life as genre rather than aspects of city life.” Amorsolo’s impressionistic flair is remarkably evident, a foremost influence by the Spanish impressionist Joaquin Sorolla. Characterized by a loose, quick, and “pulsating” brush work and broken colors, the piece exhibit not only the spontaneous quality of plein air painting (a spur-of-the-moment character, as particularly evident in the loose rendering of the human figures’ faces and their garments) but the artist’s genteel disposition as he revels in sweet nostalgia for the glory days of an idyllic countryside, a place he once called home during his youth (Amorsolo spent his boyhood amid vast rice fields and tranquil abaca plantations in Daet, Camarines Norte.). The piece basks in the warm gaiety of the sunlight. Noticeably, Amorsolo strategically positions his illuminating device in the central subject, the dalaga. This emphasis displays Amorsolo’s enduring homage to the image of the dalagang Filipina, which, for him, is the consummate personification of what he aims to project in his genre paintings: giving prominence to a kind of enlightened nationalism (amid rapid modernization and Americanization brought by the American colonial masters) that aims to cast light on the pastoral as the fundamental root and earnest collective identity of the Filipino nation. (Adrian Maranan)