Category: Paintings
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A Dutch Print of Batanes, Philippines (1698)
A recent report says Chinese scholars at a 30 June 2026 symposium at Jinan University claimed that China has sovereignty over Batanes, describing the islands as a “natural geographical extension” of Taiwan. Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro rejected the claim as baseless and ludicrous, while the Department of Foreign Affairs stated that Philippine sovereignty over…
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Juan Luna at Casa-Museu José Benlliure
Valencia, Spain— Five little-known works by Juan Luna remain in the Casa-Museu José Benlliure, far from the Philippine collections that usually define his career. Four are catalogued under his name, while a fifth watercolor carries a tentative attribution: Sacerdotisa (1883), Retrato de María Benlliure Ortiz niña con abrigo azul (1884), Poblado filipino (c. 1880), Paisaje…
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Josef Selleny’s View of Manila, 1858
When Josef Selleny visited Manila in 1858 as part of the Austrian Novara expedition, the city was a busy Spanish colonial port defined by walls, churches, cigar factories, river traffic, and the movement of hemp, tobacco, and other commodities. Shipping on the Pasig River at Manila belongs to this moment of maritime activity. Signed with…
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Anonymous Filipino, Girl with Bird and Flowers, c. 1801-1850
The painting Niña con pájaro y flores (Girl with Bird and Flowers) has been identified as Filipino based on the species of the bird shown in the background. The museum record identifies the bird as a pied fantail, Rhipidura javanica, a species associated with the Philippines and Southeast Asia. It appears on a branch at…
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Damian Domingo, Girl with a puppy, 1833
I would not describe Damián Domingo’s Niña con perrito [Girl with a puppy, a miniature poodle] as a discovery in the strict sense. The ivory miniature was already known by at least 2012, when it appeared in Madrid’s Museo del Romanticismo records on children’s portrait miniatures. To my knowledge, however, it has received little or…
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Rafael, A Story in Portraits
I returned to Vicente Rafael’s essay on photography after learning of his passing on February 21, 2026. Professor Rafael, as I continued to call him even after knowing him for years, was seventy. Our conversations became more regular after I began graduate studies at Cornell, where he had also studied in the early 1980s. I…
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What do we mean when we say “Happy Father’s Day”?
Maybe we are not only greeting a father, but acknowledging a presence that shaped us before we could fully recognize it. For Jacques Lacan, the father is not only the biological parent but also a place in language. The father is one of the first figures through whom we learn that love is also structure.…
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Princess Philippine
For a famously chaotic republic, Filipinos seem to have a particular fondness for naming their daughters after queens and princesses. I once saw a post, whether real or satire, I can’t recall, about a class roster in which more than half the girls were named “Princess.” So if you’re looking for a royal name for…
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Jan van der Straet’s (Stradanus) Conquest of the Philippine Islands (ca. 1590s)
Jan van der Straet’s (Stradanus) Conquest of the Philippine Islands (ca. 1590s) is among the earliest European images of the archipelago. The surviving work is a preparatory drawing (modello) for a monochrome (grisaille) painting executed by his son Scipione Stradano for the funeral ceremonies of Philip II of Spain at the Basilica of San Lorenzo…
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From the Archives: Art Collection, Imelda Marcos Style
By Fox Butterfield, Special To the New York Times/ The New York Times Archives March 12, 1986 Imelda Marcos routinely took large numbers of paintings from a major museum here to display in her houses around the Philippines, a team of Government inspectors found today. ”She’d come and pick things up whenever she wanted, even…
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Erased Fernando Zobel mural at Parish of the Holy Sacrifice (1953-1955)
I visited the Parish of the Holy Sacrifice at the University of the Philippines yesterday and tried to find out the exact location of Fernando Zóbel’s now erased mural. Completed in 1955, the circular church brought together some of the most important figures in Philippine modernism: architecture by Leandro Locsin, sculpture by Napoleon Abueva, floor…
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Mikhail Tikhonovich Tikhanov: a Russian artist in Manila (1819)
During the Manila stop of Captain V.M. Golovnin’s 1817–1819 circumnavigation aboard the sloop Kamchatka, the expedition artist Mikhail T. Tikhanov produced a series of drawings from direct observation, of which only three Manila scenes are known to survive. An Indian in Manila Took Tikhanov’s Hat and Ran Away, Malays Arey and Thomas from the Island…
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Death of Cleopatra, an art historical dialogue
Juan Luna’s The Death of Cleopatra (1881) strikes me first for its contrast with motion and stillness. Cleopatra is already dead. Her body lies stretched across a richly adorned bed at the centre of the composition, draped in diaphanous fabric and jewellery, her torso partially exposed, her head tilted back in a pose that suggests…
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From the Archive: EL 82
Originally published in Excelsior, Ano XXIX (Numero 928), Febrero 29, 1932 Five decades ago, on the first day of March of that year so sorrowfully remembered in the history of the capital—because during its course it was first visited by the terrible traveler from the Ganges, which spread death and the most dreadful devastation among…
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From the Archive: A New Direction in Filipino Art
Orginally published in Philippine Review, Volume II (Issue No. 6) August 1944 This article by Galo B. Ocampo may be read as a rare document of Philippine modernism in the visual arts under Japanese occupation. It records, from within, a moment that has largely escaped art historiography: that the cause of modernism did not stall during…
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From the Archive: Philippine University’s 1936 Painting Exhibition
Originally published in The American Chamber of Commerce Journal, Vol. XVI, No.4 (April 1936) We review the yearly art exhibit at the University of the Philippines because wealth patronizes art and because, further, it is far ahead of past exhibits. We should say it contains at least a dozen pieces that would grace the average…
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From the Archive: What About Filipino Painters?
Originally published in Panorama, Volume X (Issue No.120 December 1958 They are a product of both East and West,but have a distinct art of their ownBy E. Aguilar Cruz Painting and architecture were integrated until comparatively recent times. It was only with the rise of the European merchant class, which had no palaces but town…
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Monthly art history article for Philippines Graphic
I’ve started writing a semi-regular art history feature for Philippines Graphic. Founded in 1927 by Ramon Roces, the magazine remains one of the country’s oldest periodicals still in print. My article this month traces the lesser-known history of Spoliarium by Juan Luna in Rome and Barcelona, where it was first exhibited alongside Catalan artists. Get…
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Women Pioneers of Philippine Art
In celebration of International Women’s Day, allow me to introduce three pioneering and remarkable women in Philippine Art. By the late 19th century, women began carving their place in formal art education led by the trailblazing Pelagia Mendoza y Gotianquin (1867-1939). Born in Pateros, Mendoza grew up demonstrating exceptional talent in artistic pursuits such as…
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Lozano’s Letras y Figuras in the FDR Museum for Mapping Philippine Material Culture (SOAS)
While researching visual representations of port cities, I encountered an unexpected object at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum: a nineteenth-century letras y figuras painting by the Manila artist José Honorato Lozano (1815/1821–1885). The Roosevelt Library—best known for presidential papers, wartime correspondence, and family memorabilia—is not the first place art historians would think…
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A Filipino painter you should know: Eduardo Arandia Salgado
The following article expands the original posted here: https://libguides.nybg.org/c.php?g=1465030 Eduardo Arandia Salgado (1910–1987) was a Filipino painter and botanical illustrator born in Manila. He studied painting at the University of the Philippines, completing advanced courses between 1931 and 1932 under the direction of Fabian de la Rosa and Fernando Amorsolo. Trained in a classical style,…
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Antonio Garcia Llamas (1912–1999)
Antonio Garcia y Llamas (1912–1999) was a Filipino painter, muralist, and teacher who worked between Manila, Jakarta, and Madrid. Little is written about Garcia but his work aligns with the Philippine academic tradition in twentieth-century Philippine painting. He was born in Manila on 16 May 1912 and received his early education at the Colegio de…
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Intellectual and Social Currents in the Establishment of the Academia de Dibujo y Pintura (1821–1834) published in Sojourn
I’m pleased to announce the publication of my article in Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia: Geronimo Cristobal, “Intellectual and Social Currents in the Establishment of the Academia de Dibujo y Pintura (1821–1834),” Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 41, no. 1 (2026): 1–45.https://doi.org/10.1355/sj41-1a The article revisits the origins of the…
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Manila Beans in a Medici Recipe Book
When I visited Florence over the summer, I was surprised by how many Filipinos I met. Some were priests. Others ran restaurants or worked as artists. Hearing Tagalog in Tuscan streets made me think about older connections between Manila and Europe. I began wondering how Manila was imagined by the rest of the world during…
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Museum installation focuses on small figures in large landscapes
I wrote about staffage in vues d’optique—a genre of etching popular in the second half of the eighteenth century—for a new exhibition at the Johnson Museum. I first encountered these prints during my research fellowship in Leiden and was struck to learn that, around the same time, the Johnson received a donation of a set…
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The Chapel in the Six Circuits of Hell
In his Kapilya installation for Art Fair Philippines, Max Balatbat assembles a makeshift chapel of salvaged wood and rusted rebar. This is supposed to represent the look of faith forged from marginal lives that the art writer Carla Gamalinda has compared to the one studied by Rey Ileto’s Pasyon at Revolution. A pendulum whip swings…
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Modernist Morophilia
Thank you to my colleagues at the Ateneo, especially Charlie Samuya Veric, for making this possible. This lecture on January 19 2026 will be inside Ateneo Katipunan Campus at the NGF Conference Room, located on the ground floor of Horacio De La Costa Hall. During my dissertation research, I came to see how many of…
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Sikatuna as viewer’s surrogate in Luna’s Pacto de Sangre
I reread Filomeno Aguilar’s essay on the pacto de sangre, and it reminded me how often Luna’s painting is still described as a straightforward image of uneven relations between Spaniards and indigenous leaders. Even the encyclopedia article by Santiago Pilar echoes this. That reading treats the canvas as if it were meant to function like…
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Juan Luna’s French Orientalist Connection
For a long time, art historians have speculated about Juan Luna’s larger network of artists in Paris, including the extent to which he moved within the academic orbit of Jean-Léon Gérôme, the towering figure of French Orientalism. Gérôme’s pedagogical influence has often been inferred through stylistic parallels and early biographical testimony, yet documentary anchors have…
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The afterlives of Rizal’s A orillas del Pasig
A orillas del Pasig circulated in late nineteenth-century Manila as music sung in drawing rooms and printed as sheet music. Its most familiar version, A orillas del Pasig: Danza Filipina para Canto y Piano, features lyrics credited to José Rizal and music composed by his Ateneo Municipal classmate Blas Echegoyen. Hardly anyone remembers that the…
Geronimo Cristobal 