Ongpin and the ‘educated eye’

One of the what-if questions I am often asked is: Who are the figures from Philippine history you want to have over for dinner conversation? Everyone is surprised that Rizal is at the bottom of my list, simply because I know him too well. He left 25 volumes of writing, on which I have built a career.

From our heroes, I would pick Apolinario Mabini because he only left two volumes of writing and remains an enigma to me. The Luna brothers—Manuel, Juan, Jose, Joaquin, and Antonio—should be engaging, but to see them from another angle, wouldn’t it be better to hear what Laureana Novicio had to say about the prominent Luna boys? Teodora Alonso on Jose Rizal? Catalina de Castro on Andres Bonifacio? All Philippine presidents past and present may loom larger than life to us mortals, but not so for Trinidad Famy (Emilio Aguinaldo), Maria Dolores Molina (Manuel L. Quezon), Josefa Edralin (Ferdinand Marcos), and Soledad Roa (Rodrigo Duterte). Sigmund Freud would probably choose forgotten mothers of famous sons.

From a list of nonheroes of the 20th century, I would choose men who understood and shaped Philippine art long before it became the speculative investment it is today: Fernando Amorsolo, Fabian de la Rosa, Guillermo Tolentino, Hernando R. Ocampo (visual artists I have been researching on), Fernando Zobel (scholar, painter, and philanthropist), and Alfonso T. Ongpin (gentleman scholar, art dealer and restorer, son of the nationalist businessman who is honored with a prominent Chinatown street).

Ongpin came to mind recently because of “Sorprendidos” (The Surprised), a painting by Juan Luna whose provenance or trail of ownership starts from Alfonso Ongpin, then on to Luis Araneta, and ends with Arturo Rocha. I find it amusing that the auction house affixed the old-style honorific “Don” to all three men, because nobody uses “Don” anymore, except maybe for a hated movie kontrabida. In modern times, Filipinos use English titles that refer to positions: Archbishop, Bishop, Fr., Senator, Congressman, Governor, Mayor, Barangay Captain, Director, Assistant Director, etc. Honorifics also refer to occupations that require postgraduate degrees or professional regulation: Professor, Doctor, Engineer, Attorney, Architect or “Tech,” whatever that means.

For all the money that passes into the art market these days, some people are not impressed, like a French friend with a double surname who once described the arrondissement or Paris borough where the Philippine Embassy was located as being “populated by people who only made their money in the last 200 years.” In a similar way, we learn about “old money” and “Manila’s 500” before World War II from my friend Toto Gonzalez, who writes a gossipy blog and illustrated auction catalog essays.

Alfonso T. Ongpin (1885-1975) was an art dealer, art historian, and art restorer long before these preoccupations became professionalized. He ran an art and framing shop that supplied the needs of prewar artists like Amorsolo and De la Rosa. He developed methods for cleaning paintings and repairing works of art validated by the commission tasked to conserve the paintings in prewar Malacañang. He became a leading expert on Rizal by collecting anything and everything on the hero. His opinion was sought and respected when it came to issues of authenticity, because he was able, from his relationship with the Luna descendants, to trace the origin of a painting all the way back to Luna’s studio.

I have been reading up on Ongpin lately because of a controversy that raged in 1956 over a copy of the “Spoliarium” by Luna that was questioned by Luna’s ignorant daughter-in-law and by the architect Carlos Da Silva, who was active in the Juan Luna Centennial Commission. The 1956 controversy was a mirror of the 2018 issue on yet another copy of the “Spoliarium”: Was it really by Luna, or was it a forgery?

Today, the uninitiated are blinded by “scientific testing” of paint and canvas, which is not foolproof because one needs the “educated eye” for authentication. Connoisseurship may seem subjective and arbitrary, if not for expertise gained over many years of observation and research. We don’t have the acknowledged connoisseurship of Ongpin and Araneta on which to build a case for attribution, dating, and authentication anymore. But sometimes, one rare piece emerges from the woodwork with its provenance ironclad.

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