Dalagang Bukid (Woman with Banga), 1926
oil on panel
h. 20 (50.8 cm) w. 16 in. (40.6 cm)
overall: 26 x 22 in.
signed, dated 1926, and inscribed ‘Manila’ lower right, with old Sotheby's label on verso

This portrait depicts Amorsolo’s muse, the Dalagang Bukid, dressed in the traditional Filipino baro’t saya with translucent sleeves and a bandana to protect her hair from the intense equatorial sunlight. The sitter became Amorsolo’s ideal of Filipino beauty, so he understandably revisited and reinterpreted this particular composition on numerous occasions. This example, dated 1926, appears to be the artist’s earliest version of the subject, as well as one of the largest in scale.

The artist’s fascination with the effects of light, for which he would become one of the most famous painters of the Luminist school, is abundantly clear in this early work, with its virtuosic formal handling of the figure set against the light-infused background. By placing the primary light-source behind the sitter and delineating it in an unfocused haze of brushstrokes -- which contrasts greatly with the clearly-defined features of the sitter -- Amorsolo is better able to define the figure’s depth in space, lending a sense of three-dimensionality to a two-dimensional art-form.

Another example, painted in 1938, is presently held in the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Collection, Philippines.

(updated 3/27/19): Overall excellent, with a small, shallow horizontal scratch at the end of the bandana (left side) and a very shallow scratch (apparently affecting only the varnish) at the top of the forearm. We do not see any other condition issues.

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