All about portraits
WHEN Lisa Guerrero Nakpil, commissioner of the National Historical Commission of the Philippines and an advocate for public history, asked me to write a chapter on some of the most important portraits in Philippine history that were featured in the book “It’s All About Faces,” she specifically asked me to choose from portraits from our National Museum of Fine Arts.
Another favorite portrait of mine there aside from Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo’s portrait of the first Filipino diplomat, Felipe Agoncillo, is Fernando Amorsolo’s portrait of Jose B. Laurel Jr., the son of President Jose P. Laurel and former speaker of the House of Representatives. Even when displayed with other masterpieces of our masters and national artists at the National Museum, it looks prominently imposing because it is a full-body portrait and is of a larger size than the usual Amorsolo portrait. It mesmerizes me when I see it.
Even historians of today may not be so familiar with Laurel’s biography, but because of this portrait, I always wanted to know more about him. Writing the book chapter was an opportunity to do so, and I read “Pepito, Speaker of the House: The Public Life of Jose B. Laurel, Jr.” by Justice Isagani A. Cruz and Cynthia Cruz Datu. He was named after Rizal; thus, he was called “Bayani” by his father and was also called Cuya Pito, Pepito and Bigote. That mustache was prominent in the portrait.
As a young legislator in 1946, he was delivering a speech against the parity rights of the Americans in the Philippines when he was asked to stop. He “responded with a volley of unprintable curses and hurled an inkwell that splattered against the wall of a chamber and shocked a whole assemblage.”
Yet, despite his acid tongue, according to his friend Justice Cruz, Pepito’s best trait was his sincerity. Adding these characteristics up, it gives us an impression of a downto-earth guy who is different from the academic lawyers and lawmakers of the day, which Amorsolo depicted through Pepito’s pose of casualness and informality despite wearing a formal Barong Tagalog, hiding one hand in a pocket while resting the other on his office table, a symbol of authority.
This reminded me of another tip from famous portraitist Igor V. Babailov, honorary academician of the Russian Academy of Arts: “Another way to assess the quality of work … is to observe the artist’s ability to paint hands. It has been recognized by generations of artists to be even more challenging than painting the portrait itself. The Masters referred to hands as ‘the second portrait.’ Given their impeccable knowledge of human anatomy and not to mention that they painted only from life, the hands in their portrait paintings look life-like, just as the heads do. Strikingly, many of today’s artists experience difficulty with painting hands, even when they are copying photographs. So once again, simply look at the larger number of the portrait samples where the hands are included and then listen to your heart.”