Master Watercolorist Josė Honorato Lozano—the Sequel
/Since that first article, I have learned a little more about Lozano’s life. In addition to his commission work as a freelance artist, he also was an illustrator at La Illustracion del Oriente, a popular magazine of the time. Here are also a few more Lozano works (from super-expensive, now out-of-print, limited-edition, coffee table art books) which we can share with the reader.
Three Publicly-Shared Lozano Portfolios
To date, the three most comprehensive and beautiful albums in pristine condition featuring Lozano’s works are:
1. The Nyssens-Flebus Album consisting of 25 watercolor landscapes of Manila and environs in the mid-19th century. This was owned by Belgian banker Jean Flebus and caused the whole Lozano watercolor revival fever to break when it appeared on the UK Antiques Roadshow TV show in July 1995. Before it was acquired by its new owner at auction, Sotheby’s reproduced the plates and made copies commercially available. But the new owner is anonymous, and the volume is most probably still in Europe.
The lucky Belgian banker Jean Flebus and his wife, Hilda, showing off the treasured Lozano album when it appeared at the UK Antiques Roadshow, June 1995.
2. The Gervasio Gironella Album. At an antiquities conservation conference in Madrid in January 2000, the Bibleoteca Nacional de España (BNE) showed a hitherto unknown Lozano album to Regalado “Ricky” Trota Jose, Jr., the Philippine representative of the UST Libraries. It was the Gironella Album, apparently unseen by any Filipino eyes in the intervening 20th century and is the largest of the known bound Lozano works. It consists of 176 outstanding plates (both textual and graphic plates of social and ethnographic content; 76 pictorial layouts).
We featured some of the watercolors in this album in the October article but here is one more:
India Buyera. (Plate 32 from the Gironella album showing a female vendor of buyo, possibly extract of betel nut which became nga-nga. (Remember the song: Bloody Mary’s always chewing betel juice? (Lyric c/o Oscar Hammerstein II.) That’s the nut source.)
Thanks to the Bibleoteca Nacional de España (BNE), the magic of the internet (and the sharp research skills of reader Dolores Ll. Amor of Laguna), the entire content of the Gironella folio can be viewed digitally and entirely from: http://bdh-rd.bne.es/viewer.vm?id=105391&fbclid=IwAR2BKgBqvuIs9nYhkPByHhOK0j6I6EAgtPRgfNCHGf607n77FD5NTEtwVy8
Because it is an extremely large digital file, it may take a few attempts before you can connect to the link. Be a little persistent. It saves a trip to Madrid just to see the entire edition. If you find the digital Madrid file too onerous to peruse, try this YouTube “passing review” (Lamento filipino) of the same images with una cancion española muy hermosa (Lamento Boincano) por Victor Jara. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktwmOGRq5cY (Ignore the few errant Filipino-American War cartoons in there. They are out of place.)
3. The Jose Gandara Album, commissioned by/for Jose de la Gandara y Navarro, Spanish governor-general in the Philippines 1866-69, is acknowledged to be finest collection of Lozano’s works in one binding. Although there are only 27 watercolor scenes (vs. 76 in the Gironella album), they are “considered by many as his most outstanding work for their sheer volume and the quality of the composition, artistry and craftsmanship.”
The ownership of the Album Gandara remains a closely guarded secret. We are partially lucky, however, that some of the best plates have been reproduced in Album: Islas Filipinas 1663-1888 by Josė Maria A. Cariňo and Sonia Pinto Ner (published by Ars Mundi, Manila, © 2004 but now out of print). The authors write: “Each of the 26 watercolors in the Gandara Album is a masterpiece.” We are happy to share some of these with the reader:
Juegos de villar y panguingue de los indios. Locals playing billards and panguingue, an old card game.
Españolas de Filipinas. Philippine-born daughters of the Spanish gentry in the best of Fil-Hispanic finery.
Vista del Jardin Botanico y estatua de Ysabel II. (View of the Botanical Garden and of the statue of Isabel II; circa 1865-70) Probably Lozano’s most ambitious and detailed work. It depicts the area that is the Arroceros Forest Park and Plaza Lawton today. This view looks north, towards what will become Quiapo. Note the Colgante Bridge in the far distance, center, which became today’s Quezon Bridge.
Other Artists of the Period
Another beneficial result of the renewed interest in Lozano is re-appreciation of other Filipino artists of the period. Lozano’s contemporaries like Damian Domingo, Espiridion de la Rosa and Justiniano Asuncion, who more or less specialized in the same ethnographic documentation of the costumes and customs of the times, are getting their due share of attention. A limited number of works by these lesser known Filipino artists have survived and some of their owners, too, are sharing those riches. Space limitation prohibits us from featuring more works of these artists but here are two special pieces from Justiniano Asuncion.
Ang Magbabanig (A Mat Vendor), watercolor on paper, by Justiniano Asuncion.
Early photography also was becoming more widespread and this helped both artists and subjects a great deal. Following is a great juxtaposition of a b&w photograph of Agueda Paterno and her magnificent oil on canvas portrait by Asuncion.
Early photo on left of Agueda Paterno
Oil portrait on right by Justiniano Asuncion (in a private collection).
World Record for a Lozano Album Sold at Auction
As the Lozano revival craze heated up over the last decade, still another Lozano portfolio, Albun de JA”, came up for an online auction (with the Abalarte auction house) of Madrid in July 2015.
Cover of the Albun JA, the world-record holder of sales of Lozano’s portfolios.
It appeared to be a complete, mint album consisting of 22 signed and dated gouaches by Lozano. The initial asking price was 9,000 euros. When the gavel came down, Albun JA sold for 500,000 euros + buyer’s premium. It stands as a world record for a Lozano album.
It was bought by a very discreet Manila collector and businessman. Because the new Filipino owner wishes to remain very private, Albun AJ and the Gandara Album remain the most inaccessible of the bound Lozano works, until the new owner chooses to share with the art-loving public the contents of the treasure.
With the renewed interest in Lozano’s work heating up and previously uncooperative collectors slowly opening up, scholars have been able to ascertain, authenticate, and attribute other works more definitively to Lozano, helping solve lingering mysteries.
1. Authorship of one Ayala Album Cleared up
Before the Ayalas acquired the folio of signed Lozano works from a Spanish dealer in 1991-2 for their museum in Makati, they had one folio of similar watercolors, called the “Karuth Album,” in their personal holdings. It was named after one Carl Johann Karuth, who came to Manila in the mid-19th century, crossed paths with fellow German, Jacobo Zobel Hinsch, a chemist who established the Botica or Farmacia Zobel in old Intramuros and became the patriarch of the present-day Zobel de Ayala clan. The young Karuth eventually worked for Zobel and in time, married one of his employer Zobel’s daughters, Carmen Zobel Zangroniz.
For generations, the “Karuth Album” was kept in the personal archives of the family and was uneasily attributed to the young Herr Karuth only because there was no other signature and the captions were in German and Spanish. The album contained a great rendering (below) of the warehouse of the Farmacia Zobel in old Intramuros. It was thought that the album was given by the young Karuth to his future father-in-law as a way of ingratiating himself. When the spate of authentically attributed Lozano-albums became available, however, it became apparent that the mysterious artist of the Ayala-Karuth Album could not have been anyone else but Jose Honorato Lozano. Another art mystery solved.
A rendering of the vast warehouse of the old Farmacia Zobel by Lozano.
2. Mystery “ML” Marquis Uncovered
Previously, I had surmised that one Lozano portfolio, the ML Album (which had sold in Manila to an anonymous Filipino collector for an estimated P6,424,000 / US$129,000, was commissioned and compiled for the Marquis de Loja. I had fallen for the unintentional trap sprung by Salcedo Gallery, the auction house which sold the ML Album, when it would only divulge the selling family’s identity to the eventual buyer of the album. That was a red flag to me, but I had incorrectly guessed it as the Loja marquisate.
But scholar and researcher extraordinaire Paquito de la Cruz saved the day for me. He concluded that the mysterious “ML” was Don Martín Larios y Herreros de Tejada, marqués de Larios, and I concur. De la Cruz lasered in on the mysterious family. The Larios name of Malaga ticked off all the boxes of the Salcedo Gallery’s teaser hints. It turns out that the information on the Larios family appeared only in Spanish-language sources.
Manuel Larios y Herreros de Tejada
The Larios family have been industrialists in Spain from the early 19th century through modern times. Today the finest gin in Spain is made by the Larios distillery.
The Lozano connection? There are definitely Manila links. In the mid-19th century, the Larios family firm established sugar refining facilities in the city of Motril, Spain. That was the hometown of Don Manolo Elizalde's maternal grandfather (an admiral), who was married to a sister of one of the Ynchausti y Cía (YCo) partners in Manila. The Ynchausti partnership came to own the Puente de Clavería (aka Puente Colgante – depicted in the panoramic view of Luneta by Jose Lozano above) when YCo took over Aguirre y Cía., successor to (the Manila branch of) Matía, Menchacatorre y Cía) which had originally constructed the toll bridge in 1852. The Ynchaustis operated the Colgante as a toll bridge until June 15, 1911 when the City of Manila bought it from them for Php 42,500.
A bit of old Manila and the Pasig River, around the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. The old Puente Colgante as depicted in Lozano’s panoramic view of the Botanical Garden. Built in 1852, it was the first suspension bridge in the Far East. Today’s Quezon Bridge was built over the Colgante’s span.
So it was probably through these connections that the ML Album gift of Lozano’s watercolors was bequeathed to Larios de Tejada without the marquis ever setting foot in 19th century Philippines. The album was bought by a prominent Manila art collector who (again) chooses to remain anonymous.
If Señor Lozano only knew what great admirers of his genius his own ex-colonialist countrymen on opposite sides of the planet have become 140 years later. Art is long but life is short.
SOURCES:
Album: Islas Filipinas 1663-1888 by Josė Maria A. Cariňo and Sonia Pinto Ner (published by Ars Mundi, Manila, Philippines, © 2004 (now o.p.)
ML – Marques de Larios info, c/o Paquito de la Cruz
Website of the Larios family: http://www.larios.com/styled-3/index.html?fbclid=IwAR2Y8v6vaVwEyKkccnojXgvFxZ05nfYM9xCBMrFWbLNH8MjNI7_RG8b1_GI
Myles Garcia
Myles A. Garcia is a Correspondent and regular contributor to www.positivelyfilipino.com. He has written three books: Secrets of the Olympic Ceremonies (latest edition, 2016); Thirty Years Later . . . Catching Up with the Marcos-Era Crimes (© 2016); and his latest, Of Adobe, Apple Pie, and Schnitzel With Noodles—all available in paperback from amazon.com (Australia, USA, Canada, UK and Europe).
Myles is also a member of the International Society of Olympic Historians (ISOH), contributing to their Journal, and pursuing dramatic writing lately. For any enquiries: razor323@gmail.com
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