Álvaro Vega I Córdoba, (EFE) two decades later, at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Córdoba, more than a century ago, in 1922, once they have undergone restoration treatments.
The two paintings are part of the Philippine art collection of the Córdoba art gallery and are exhibited for the first time since they became part of its funds 101 years ago, without any news that they had been exhibited before, since Ángel Avilés, a collector and amateur painter, was in Manila to organize the I Regional Exhibition of the Philippines, (1893-95) and the works are dated 1895, ‘Paisaje de Manila’, by Rafael Cascarosa y Martínez, and 1896, ‘Filipina ‘, by Miguel Zaragoza Aranquizna.
This was what José María Palencia, technical adviser to the Museum of Fine Arts of Córdoba, commented to EFE, who stressed that “the Philippine question is a significant part of the legacy of Ángel Avilés because there is very little Philippine legacy in Spain, even more so when the Philippine Islands were Spanish heritage for so long, but few elements related to Philippine culture are preserved in museums and public libraries in Spain.
The donation of Ángel Avilés
Ángel Avilés (Córdoba, 1842-Madrid, 1924) donated five paintings and one work on paper among the 433 works that he ceded to the art gallery in his hometown, “a set of works on paper, watercolours, drawings and engravings that make up a significant nucleus, especially to learn about Spanish art from the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century”, two years before dying without descendants.
Among them is also one of the references in Philippine painting, ‘Filipino Woman’ (1895), by Lorenzo de la Rocha Icazar (1838-1898). A painter comparable in the Philippines to Goya, in Spain in the 18th and 19th centuries, or to Zuloaga, in the 20th, according to Palencia. That he has specified that the rest of his collection went to “the Royal Academy of San Fernando. In which he was a librarian and academic for many years ”.
‘Filipino Woman’ is exhibited together with the other two paintings and the drawing in the exhibition ‘Donation of Avilés’, which the Museum of Fine Arts of Córdoba dedicated to the centenary of the transfer between September 26 and September 18 of last year, within the set of 42 works that were selected from the legacy, among which were not the two that are exhibited until next September 24 due to the state in which they were.
For its exhibition to the public of these two new works, a “cleaning up of the work has been carried out, not a deep restoration, but a stretching of the canvas and a superficial cleaning of the pictorial layer and varnishing again”, has specified José María Palencia.
Ongoing restoration work
The director of the museum, José María Domenech, has explained to EFE that this action is part of “the continuous work and that there are times, even, it is not seen” of restoration of the collections “and that is why we want to show” these works, ” because it is a task that does not go out to the public, that does not transcend”, despite the fact that “it is one of our functions”.
“The restoration work is continuous, there is a planning and a plan when it comes to addressing which pieces we restore,” said Domenech, who has made it clear that the exhibition of the two paintings “is both a way to value both the work that the Museum does so that the public can enjoy the works in their full and best condition”.
There is no certainty of the way in which Avilés got hold of the works that ended a little over a century ago in the Bellas Artes de Córdoba. In the opinion of José María Palencia, it is most likely that the authors themselves gave them to him, since it is known that during his stay in the Philippines commissioned by the Government of Maura “he had contact with the School of Fine Arts of Manila, which was almost recently created and that he also strengthened”, despite the fact that his mission in the colony was not strictly artistic, but covered other fields “of the wealth of the Philippines in general”.
An unknown author and another reputed
About one of the authors of the two works that are now exhibited for the first time there are no references in the historiography of art. Of Rafael Cascarosa y Martínez, only one allusion to a Filipino businessman of the same name has been located, without it being possible to specify whether he is the author of the view of the Pasig riverbank in Manila Bay, in which its abundant vegetation, of different greenish tones and that are reflected in the water.
On the other hand, by Miguel Zaragoza Aranquizna (Gapán, 1842-Manila, 1923), whose work is a full-length figure of a woman, dressed in the popular costume of the islands, carrying a ceramic pitcher resting on her waist, there is data, since he is a renowned Filipino painter, who furthered his studies with a scholarship at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts and at the Spanish Academy in Rome, whose works received various awards in Europe and America. EFE