Fernando Amorsolo

The Philippine artist Fernando Amorsolo (1892-1972) was a portraitist and painter of rural
land scapes. He is best known for his craftsmanship and mastery in the use of light.

Fernando Amorsolo was born May 30, 1892, in the Paco district of Manila. At 13 he was
apprenticed to the noted Philippine artist Fabian de la Rosa, his mother's first cousin. In 1909
Amorsolo enrolled at the Liceo de Manila and then attended the fine-arts school at the University
of the Philippines, graduating in 1914. After working three years as a commercial artist and part-
time instructor at the university, he studied at the Escuela de San Fernando in Madrid. For seven
months he sketched at the museums and on the streets of Madrid, experimenting with the use of
light and color. That winter he went to New York and discovered the works of the postwar
impressionists and cubists, who became the major influence on his works. On his return to
Manila, he set up his own studio.

During this period, Amorsolo developed the use of light—actually, backlight—which is his
greatest contribution to Philippine painting. Characteristically, an Amorsolo painting contains a
glow against which the figures are outlined, and at one point of the canvas there is generally a
burst of light that highlights the smallest detail.

During the 1920s and 1930s Amorsolo's output of paintings was prodigious. In 1939 his
oilAfternoon Meal of the Workers won first prize at the New York World's Fair. During World
War II Amorsolo continued to paint. The Philippine collector Don Alfonso Ongpin
commissioned him to execute a portrait in absentia of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, which he did at
great personal risk. He also painted Japanese occupation soldiers and self-portraits. His wartime
paintings were exhibited at the Malacanang presidential palace in 1948. After the war Amorsolo
served as director of the college of fine arts of the University of the Philippines, retiring in 1950.
Married twice, he had 13 children, five of whom became painters.

Amorsolo was noted for his portraits. He made oils of all the Philippine presidents, including the
revolutionary leader Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo, and other noted Philippine figures. He also painted
many wartime scenes, including Bataan, Corner of Hell, and One Casualty.

Amorsolo, who died in 1972, is said to have painted more than 10,000 pieces. He continued to
paint even in his late 70s, despite arthritis in his hands. Even his late works feature the classic
Amorsolo tropical sunlight. He said he hated "sad and gloomy" paintings, and he executed only
one painting in which rain appears.
Fernando Cueto Amorsolo (May 30, 1892 – April 24, 1972) is one of the most important artists in
the history of painting in the Philippines.[1]Amorsolo was a portraitist and painter of rural Philippine
landscapes. He is popularly known for his craftsmanship and mastery in the use of light. Born
in Paco, Manila, he earned a degree from the Liceo de Manila Art School in 1909.[2][3][4]

Don Fabián de la Rosa, his mother's cousin and a Philippine painter. At the age of 13, Amorsolo
became an apprentice to De la Rosa, who would eventually become the advocate and guide to
Amorsolo's painting career. During this time, Amorsolo's mother embroidered to earn money, while
Amorsolo helped by selling water color postcards to a local bookstore for ten centavos each.
Amorsolo's brother, Pablo Amorsolo, was also a painter. Amorsolo's first success as a young painter
came in 1908, when his painting Leyendo el periódico took second place at the Bazar Escolta, a
contest organized by the Asociacion Internacional de Artistas. Between 1909 and 1914, Amorsolo
enrolled at the Art School of the Liceo de Manila, where he earned honors for his

Antipolo by Fernando Amorsolo, depicting Filipinos celebrating a town fiesta.

After graduating from the Liceo, he entered the University of the Philippines' School of Fine Arts,
where De la Rosa worked at the time. During college, Fernando Amorsolo's primary influences were
the Spanish people court painter Diego Velázquez, John Singer Sargent,Anders Zorn, Claude
Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, but mostly his contemporary Spanish masters Joaquín Sorolla
Bastida and Ignacio Zuloaga. Amorsolo's most notable wora student at the Liceo was his painting of
a young man and a young woman in a garden, which won him the first prize in the art school
exhibition during his graduation year.To make money during school, Amorsolo joined competitions
and did illustrations for various Philippine publications, including Severino Reyes’ first novel in
Tagalog language, Parusa ng Diyos ("Punishment of God"), Iñigo Ed. Regalado's Madaling
Araw ("Dawn"), as well as illustrations for editions of the Pasion. Amorsolo graduated with medals
from the University of the Philippines in 1914.

After graduating from the Univeajor influences on his work.

Amorsolo set up his own studio upon his return to Manila and painted prodigiously during the 1920s
and the 1930s. His "Rice Planting" (1922), which appeared on posters and tourist brochures,
became one of the most popular images of theCommonwealth of the Philippines. Beginning in the
1930s, Amorsolo's work was exhibited widely both in the Philippines and abroad. His
bright,optimistic, pastoral images set the tone for Philippine painting before World War II . Except for
his darker World War II-era paintings, Amorsolo painted quiet and peaceful scenes throughout his
career.

Amorsolo was sought after by influential Filipinos including Luis Araneta, Antonio Araneta and Jorge

B. Vargas. Amorsolo also became the favourite Philippine artist of United States officials and visitors
to the country. Due to his popularity, Amorsolo had to resort to photographing his works and pasted
and mounted them in an album. Prospective patrons could then choose from this catalog of his
works. Amorsolo did not create exact replicas of his trademark themes; he recreated the paintings
by varying some elements.

His works later appeared on the cover and pages of children textbooks, in novels, in commercial
designs, in cartoons and illustrations for the Philippine publications such The
Independent, Philippine Magazine, Telembang, El Renacimiento Filipino, and Excelsior. He was the
director of the University of the Philippine's College of Fine Arts from 1938 to 1952.

During the 1950s until his death in 1972, Amorsolo averaged to finishing 10 paintings a month.
However, during his later years, diabetes, cataracts, arthritis, headaches, dizziness and the death of
two sons affected the execution of his works. Amorsolo underwent a cataract operation when he was
70 years old, a surgery that did not impede him from drawing and painting. Two months after being
confined at the St. Luke's Hospital in Manila, Amorsolo died of heart failure at the age of 79 on April
24, 1972.

Four days after his death, Amorsolo was honoured as the first National Artist in Painting at
the Cultural Center of the Philippines by then President Ferdinand Marcos.

Amorsolo was a close friend of the Philippine sculptor Guillermo Tolentino, the creator of
the Caloocan City monument to the patriot Andrés Bonifacio.
Marriage and family
During his lifetime, Amorsolo was married twice and had 20 children. In 1916, he married Salud
Tolentino Jorge, with whom he had six children. Amorsolo’s first wife died in 1931 leaving him with
six children. He had six more children by a common-law wife, named Virginia Guevarra Santos.
Amorsolo have three children with her namely Manuel (followed in his father's footstep, with a
degree in Fine Arts from the University of the Philippines), Jorge and Norma when he met his
second wife. Subsequently, Virginia found an engagement ring in one of Amorsolo's drawers; she
knew about Maria, that prompted her to leave his house with her three children. In 1935, he married
Maria del Carmen who gave him eight more children. Among her daughters are Sylvia Amorsolo-
Lazo and Luz. But as Maria was giving birth with his children, Virginia had three more children with
Amorsolo. Fortunately, his reputation was growing as fast as his brood and his work was more than
enough to provide for his rather large family. Six of Amorsolo's children became artists themselves.

Style and techniques

thumb

Women and landscapes[edit]

Amorsolo is best known for his illuminated landscapes,[5] which often portrayed traditional Filipino
customs, culture, fiestas and occupations. His pastoral works presented "an imagined sense of
nationhood in counterpoint to American colonial rule" and were important to the formation of Filipino
national identity.[1] He was educated in the classical tradition and aimed "to achieve his Philippine
version of the Greek ideal for the human form."[6] In his paintings of Filipina women, Amorsolo
rejected Western ideals of beauty in favor of Filipino ideals[7] and was fond of basing the faces of his
subjects on members of his family.[8]

"[The women I paint should have] a rounded face, not of the oval type often presented to us in
newspapers and magazine illustrations. The eyes should be exceptionally lively, not the dreamy,
sleepy type that characterizes the Mongolian. The nose should be of the blunt form but firm and
strongly marked. ... So the ideal Filipina beauty should not necessarily be white complexioned, nor of
the dark brown color of the typical Malayan, but of the clear skin or fresh colored type which we often
witness when we met a blushing girl."

— Fernando Amorsolo[7]
Amorsolo used natural light in his paintings and developed the backlighting technique Chiaroscuro,
which became his artistic trademark and his greatest contribution to Philippine painting.[2][3][9] In a
typical Amorsolo painting, figures are outlined against a characteristic glow, and intense light on one
part of the canvas highlights nearby details.[3] Philippine sunlight was a constant feature of
Amorsolo's work; he is believed to have painted only one rainy-day scene.[3]

Sketches[edit]
Amorsolo was an incessant sketch artist,[7] often drawing sketches at his home, at Luneta Park, and
in the countryside.[8] He drew the people he saw around him, from farmers to city-dwellers coping
with the Japanese occupation.[7] Amorsolo's impressionistic tendencies, which may be seen in his
paintings as well, were at their height in his sketches.[7] His figures were not completely finished but
were mere "suggestions" of the image.[7]

Historical paintings and portraits[edit]

Amorsolo also painted a series of historical paintings on pre-Colonial and Spanish Colonization
events. Amorsolo's Making of the Philippine Flag, in particular, was widely reproduced.His The First
Baptism in the Philippines required numerous detailed sketches and colored studies of its elements.
These diverse elements were meticulously and carefully set by the artist before being transferred to
the final canvas. For his pre-colonial and 16th-century depiction of the Philippines, Amorsolo referred
to the written accounts of Antonio Pigafetta, other available reading materials, and visual sources He
consulted with the Philippine scholars of the time, H. Pardo de Tavera and Epifanio de los Santos.[10]

Amorsolo also painted oil portraits of Presidents like General Emilio Aguinaldo, and other prominent
individuals such as Don Alfredo Jacób and Doña Pura Garchitorena Toral ofCamarines Sur. He also
painted the wedding picture of Don Mariano Garchitorena and Doña Caridad Pamintuan
of Pampanga.

He also did a portrait of American Senator Warren Grant Magnuson (1905–1989), of the Democratic

Party from Washington, whom the Warren G. Magnuson Health Sciences Building at the University
of Washington, and the Warren G. Magnuson Clinical Center at the National Institutes of Health in
Bethesda, Maryland are named after.
Detail from Fernando Amorsolo's 1945Defence of a Filipina Woman's Honour, which is representative of
Amorsolo's World War II-era paintings. Here, a Filipino man defends a woman, who is either his wife or
daughter, from being raped by an unseen Japanese soldier. Note the Japanese military cap at the man's foot

World War II-era works[edit]

After the onset of World War II, Amorsolo's typical pastoral scenes were replaced by the depictions
of a war-torn nation. During the Japanese occupation of the Philippines during World War II,
Amorsolo spent his days at his home near the Japanese garrison, where he sketched war scenes
from the house's windows or rooftop.[8]

During the war, he documented the destruction of many landmarks in Manila and the pain, tragedy
and death experienced by Filipino people, with his subjects including "women mourning their dead
husbands, files of people with pushcarts and makeshift bags leaving a dark burning city tinged with
red from fire and blood."[10] Amorsolo frequently portrayed the lives and suffering of Filipina women
during World War II. Other World War II-era paintings by Amorsolo include a portrait in absentia of
General Douglas MacArthur as well as self-portraits and paintings of Japanese occupation soldiers.
[3]
 In 1948, Amorsolo's wartime paintings were exhibited at the Malacañang Presidential Palace.[3]

Critical evaluation[edit]
Amorsolo's supporters consider his portrayals of the countryside as "the true reflections of the
Filipino Soul."[6]

Amorsolo has been accused, however, of succumbing to commercialism and merely producing
souvenir paintings for American soldiers.[6] Critic Francisco Arcellana wrote in 1948 that Amorsolo's
paintings "have nothing to say" and that they were not hard to understand because "there is nothing
to understand."[6] Critics have criticized Amorsolo's portraits of Philippine Commonwealth
personalities, his large, mid-career anecdotal works, and his large historical paintings.[6] Of the latter,
critics have said that his "artistic temperament was simply not suited to generating the sense of
dramatic tension necessary for such works."[6]

Another critic, however, while noting that most of Amorsolo's estimated ten thousand works were not
worthy of his talent, argues that Amorsolo's oeuvre should nonetheless judged by his best works
instead of his worst.[6] Amorsolo's small landscapes, especially those of his early career, have been
judged as his best works, "hold[ing] well together plastic-ally."[6] Amorsolo may "be considered a
master of the Philippine landscape as landscape, even outranking Luna and Hidalgo who also did
some Philippine landscapes of the same measurements."[6]

Legacy
The volume of paintings, sketches and studies of Amorsolo is believed to have reached more than
10,000 pieces. Amorsolo was an important influence on contemporary Filipino art and artists, even
beyond the so-called "Amorsolo school."[6] Amorsolo's influence can be seen in many landscape
paintings by Filipino artists, including early landscape paintings by abstract painter Federico Aguilar
Alcuaz

In 2003, Amorsolo's children founded the Fernando C. Amorsolo Art Foundation, which is dedicated
to preserving Fernando Amorsolo's legacy, promoting his style and vision, and preserving a national
heritage through the conservation and promotion of his works.[11]

During the post-war period, Insular Life commissioned Amorsolo to create a series of paintings of
historical events for their offices (and which were subsequently used in Insular Life calendars from
'50s to '80s). [1].
Fernando Amorsolo was born in 1892 in Paco, Philippines. He was considered one of the many important
painters in the Philippine art history in the 20th century. One of his famous paintings was Leyendo el
periodic which won second place in the Bazar Escolta, a contest organized by the Asociacion
Internacional de Artistas. The next year he enrolled in the Art School of the Liceo de Manilla where he
graduated with honors. The University of the Philippines’ School of Fine Arts was where he later entered
and where he was influenced by famous artists like Renoir, Monet and Diego Velazquez. In the year
1920s to 1930s Amorsolo set up his own painting studio and earned his honors from his paintings and
drawings. He actively devoted his time for painting and one of his paintings, Rice Planting images were
used in brochures and posters during the Commonwealth era. The struggle of Philippines and the people
was often portrayed by Amorsolo and he used woman as themes mourning on her dead husband during
the World War II.