This year’s family Christmas card artwork was at least a couple of years in the making. It began, more or less, when online friend and 2006 Christmas card artist Victor Ancheta posted this 1913 Christmas card from his family collection online, sometime in late 2006.
It had interested me enough to get me to ask Victor to send me a soft copy. I printed it out, and spent quite some time thinking what could be done with it.
In fact, soon after New Year 2007, I asked an artist to do a study in pencil based on this design, with the prospect of eventually making it our Christmas card later that year. But because I was traveling heavily throughout the year, I did not get to pursue this design with the artist on a timely basis. Instead, another artist, Francis Nacion, made our 2007 Christmas card artwork, which was itself quite well-received.
Having managed to be less peripatetic (though actually busier) in 2008, I got to progress the pencil study with the artist. But before we look at how the study evolved, let’s meet this year’s Christmas card artist.
In previous years we had favored young Bulacan artists; in a couple of years (2004 and 2007) we went with non-Bulacan artists who were nonetheless youngish. This year’s artist is the inverse – he’s old enough to be the father of another artist, but—to his great credit—he’s from Bulacan.
Here is the artist's biographical note printed at the back of this year’s card:
Godofredo Mercado Reyes was born in 1939 and is a native of Ulandis, Mercado, Hagonoy, Bulacan. “Ka Goding” is a well-known master portraitist and paints in the traditional, classical style. His usual media are oils and pastels.
Since his beginnings as an artist, “Gody,” as he also refers to himself, has felt a strong affinity with the long tradition of classical portraiture, taking inspiration from 18th and 19th century masters including Diego Velazquez, Thomas Gainsborough, John Singer Sargent, and Thomas Eakins.
Since his beginnings as an artist, “Gody,” as he also refers to himself, has felt a strong affinity with the long tradition of classical portraiture, taking inspiration from 18th and 19th century masters including Diego Velazquez, Thomas Gainsborough, John Singer Sargent, and Thomas Eakins.
Gody's notable commissions include portraits for the late Speaker Ramon Mitra, Bulacan Governor Roberto Pagdanganan, Representative Jerry Cabochan, the late Jaime Cardinal Sin, the daughters of Iñigo Zobel, Mila Puyat, the Guanzon Family, and many others. His on-the-spot portraits are particularly impressive and well-received.
Ka Goding has participated in numerous art shows and exhibitions, and has won several awards and citations. He is a member of the art associations Lakan Sining ng Bulakan and Tabing-Dagat Painters of Hagonoy. His son, Will Reyes, is also a professional artist, and both of them may be contacted at leewilander@yahoo.com and via their website http://wilbrey.multiply.com/.
His aforementioned son Will or Willie was also the artist of our 2005 Christmas card, possibly the best-received in the entire series thus far.
This father-and-son pair of artists have been purveyors of art to my family for several years now. Ka Goding made a large-format interior scene of the ground floor of our Malolos house as it looked about five years ago.
This large work measures 77 cm tall by 147 cm wide, and shows in great detail the newspapers and magazines scattered about the living room, my mom’s aprons hanging from a dining chair finial, and various other undeniable family sloppinesses. It now hangs in the library of my aunts’ house in nearby Guiguinto.
Shortly after that work was completed, Ka Goding made another version. It is only slightly different from the first version. The most obvious change is that because of more generous dimensions (at 89 cm tall by 158 cm wide, taller and wider than the original), the three wooden-bladed ceiling fans can be shown more fully.
This version now hangs above the upright piano in the living room of our Makati apartment.
Ka Goding has also done exterior scenes for us. Immediately after we temporarily shelved the Christmas card project with him last year, he painted for us a pair of views of much-admired Malolos ancestral houses. These artworks, like the houses, were rather large in format, each measuring 65 cm tall by 121 cm wide.
The first of the pair was a view of the great, grand, and gracious turn-of-the-20th century Lino Reyes House
and the other was one of the 1933 Dr. Luis Santos House.
We also separately acquired his (much smaller) painting of the American colonial period Army and Navy Club building on the Manila seafront.
His painting of a pensive young lady was offered to us at the same time, so we did not hesitate to acquire it as well.
This Mother-and-Child in pastel was presented to us as a gift by the artist last Christmas.
As his biographical note above says, Ka Goding is best known for portraits, so in addition to portraits of buildings, we’ve commissioned him to do portraits of humans.
Specifically, about five years ago, he did a quadruple portrait for us, in four copies. If that sounds confusing, it’s simply this: he painted a group portrait of my mom, her brother, and her two sisters, then executed it in four copies so that they could each have a copy. Here’s one of the four, hanging in the guest bedroom of our Makati apartment:
My mom is flanked by her two younger sisters, and the three of them are seated on a pre-war three-seater settee. Behind them is their older (and only) brother, and in the background is yet another house portrait—of the home that their parents built in the early 1930’s directly behind the Bulacan Provincial Capitol building, and that they grew up in. (Though I spent my first five years there as well, unfortunately, the house no longer stands.)
The four copies are identically sized at 89 cm tall by 68 cm wide and differ only in minor detail. This copy is in my aunts’ bedroom in Guiguinto.
And this third copy is in dining room of our house in Malolos, partly obscured by the top of my grandmother’s antique platera beside it.
(The fourth copy, not photographed here, is in my uncle’s house in Caloocan.)
As Ka Goding has done just about every type of artwork for us over the years, we figured it was timely to have him do a Christmas card for us as well. We took the antique 1913 card’s basic idea of an adult angel and a child angel hovering over a landscape, but fleshed it out in greater detail, in the process eschewing the somewhat bombed-out appearance of the town beneath.
We asked Ka Goding to base it, roughly, on the Malolos townscape (no major surprises there), as it might have looked in the early part of the 20th century. Therefore certain landmarks like the Malolos Church (now Cathedral), the Barasoain Church, and the houses in these two churches’ respective vicinities are seen, more or less where they might have been nearly a hundred years ago (or indeed where they still stand today). This was possible only if we adopted a horizontal (“landscape”) format, rather than the vertical of the 1913 version.
The final change was to do the whole thing in color, rather than in the original’s sepia. This of course enabled the artwork to convey a Christmas-y mood even if the subject did not, strictly speaking, pertain to Christmas.
And after numerous tweaks at the printer’s to get the color balance right, here is the final artwork, in oil on canvas, measuring 24 inches (61 cm) tall by 33 inches (84 cm) wide, and entitled “Payapang Bayan” (A Peaceable Land).
From my family to yours, via Ka Goding, we would like to wish all of you
Maligayang Pasko at Manigong Bagong Taon!
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Originally published on 24 December 2008. All text and photos copyright ©2008 by Leo D Cloma. The moral right of Leo D Cloma to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
Original comments:
arcastro57 wrote on Dec 25, '08
..and may all your Christmasses be bright and full of art!
|
No comments:
Post a Comment