La Marquesa de Monte Olivar
1881
Oil on canvas
104.2 x 68.6 cm
Ayala Museum Collection
Gift of Paz Zamora de Mascuñana
La Marquesa de Monte Olivar is one of the earliest works by Juan Luna in the Ayala Museum collection. The painting is a fine example of Luna's early period and demonstrates his careful design and execution. It is painted in the manner of the figures in his 1881 competition pieces. It is possible that Luna painted La Marquesa after winning his silver medal for La muerte de Cleopatra. This early triumph had surely qualified him to undertake what was probably his first portrait commission from the Spanish nobility. To date, little information is available on the identity of the marquesa.
In Philippine art criticism, Luna's paintings are loosely described as "impressionistic." This is a fine example of a Philippine impressionist work. Luna was intrigued by the Impressionists and was quick to grasp the essence of their style. He described his own works to compatriot Jose Rizal, another Filipino in Europe, as a "mosaic of pure colors of the rainbow. " Luna applied colors directly from the paint tube, dabbing his applications side by side on the canvas, allowing the viewer's eyes to blend them together to form a unified image. Although the Marquesa's face is achieved through thinly applied layers of paint, her figure was subjected to thicker layers of paint. He chose in this formal work to confine his colors to varying shades of deep blue for the dress, white for the shawl, and pink and red tones for the complexion. To compensate for this somber, formal aura, Luna endowed La Marquesa with movement by rendering her shawl with quick strokes, which expediently evoked the varied textures in the embroidery. The brochadas--vigorous strokes usually made with a stubby brush--captured the essential forms and details in this portrait.
Lady at the Racetrack
ca. 1880's
Oil on canvas
112.5 cm x 77 cm
Ayala Museum collection
Gift of Mercede Zobel McMicking
The works of Luna mirror exciting changes in belle époque Europe at the end of the 19th century. All of Europe followed the latest ideas in city planning, fashion, and the arts and artists enthusiastically embraced these riveting developments in their works.
This painting captures a lady of substance watching and being watched on the racetrack. She is caught between the impulse of dressing as a coquette and as an amazon, themes taken up by numerous artists at the turn of the last century. She stands firmly in the foreground and is confidently attired in the height of fashion: a custom--made lace and satin dress accompanied by a spring jacket and hat, wide--brimmed at the front and decorated with trimmings. She is the city sophisticate and the racetrack suggests a liberal outlook in life. Luna inventively advertises this by posing her with a folded umbrella tucked behind her torso that is thrusting forward. The setting is the Hipódromo de la Zarzuela in Madrid.
Ragamuffin
ca 1880s
Oil on wood
22 x 10.7 cm
Bank of the Philippine Islands Collection
When the Exposition Universelle de Paris was inaugurated in May 1889, Juan Luna observed that many of the works dealt with the wretched conditions of the poor. This inspired him to move from his earlier Greco-Roman subjects to the Social Realist movement, which depicted social inequities brought about by the exploitation of the economically deprived by the present capitalist system. During his stay in Paris, he often did studies of the Parisian underclass - factory workers, beggars, and peasants. The Ragamuffin painting depicts a young boy, probably a beggar, looking pensive with his hand under his chin. This study was just one of the many oil sketches that Luna swiftly worked on during the latter part of his life.
Youth With Stick
ca 1880s
Oil on wood
45 x 31 cm
Bank of the Philippine Islands Collection
Often times for his more painstaking works, Luna would do several studies of the different characters in his paintings to see how they would look. The Youth with Stick was one of the figures that he was trying out for the painting Peuple et Rois (People and Kings), a piece he was planning to enter in the 1892 Universal Exposition in Chicago. The painting shows a Parisian mob looting the royal tombs in the Cathedral of St. Denis. Sadly he was unable to send it in, and the painting was eventually destroyed during World War II in Manila.
