Before the ascension of Carlos “Botong” V. Francisco as the maker and molder of the heroic, noble Filipino, he was first the chronicler of the Filipino hometown and its many lovable characters.
He was always, first and foremost, the most poetic inhabitant of that idealized world. Rafael Ma. Guerrero in his companion citation for Francisco’s National Artist Award, the second to be given in the country, describes his origins in Angono, which lay “some 40 kilometers east of Manila, nestled between the northern tip of Laguna de Bay and the rolling foothills of Rizal.” Guerrero described Botong’s provenance as a sleeping fishing village with no more than 4,000 inhabitants—“small by any standards,” even in the early 1970s.
Botong captured “the limpid rhythm of life in this coastal town,” Guerrero rhapsodized, and the young Botong “fished in its waters and camped out on its hills.”
In Angono, Carlos the future art master, was known only as Botong, “after an equally dark-skinned Cainta character noted in the provincial grapevine of the Rizal towns by that appellation.” The kid was known more for his basketball skills than for any effort at artmaking. But he did start drawing early, which would eventually lead him to studying at the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts from 1930 to 1935–the longest period of time he spent away from his beloved hometown.
Guerrero’s citation continues: “[Botong’s] father was an ex-seminarian, a degree holder of humanities who, for some private reason, decided to settle in this idyllic fishing village to work on the manufacture of local wine, eventually marrying a young Angono woman. Botong was five when his father died, an eventuality which strained the family’s circumstances. Still, Botong was given a proper education; an anachronism in pre-war Angono for their boys learned to fish at the side of their fathers and lived from the rich yield of the lake.”
Significantly, in his youth, Botong was among just seven boys from his hometown who went to school. And there are traces of these boys in Botong’s paintings of the period : sleeping siestas on tall trees, joining in the town’s colorful proceedings, its fiestas, and pilgrimages. The boys appear in cameos, catching their 40-winks in rough-hewn buckets, borne along the various parades, at other times, pretend-playing with the town band, its “Banda Uno” put together by Angono’s other favorite son, musician Lucio San Pedro and Botong’s cousin. They provide playful counterpoint to the lyrical renditions of the grownups at work and at play and are to be found in the earliest of Botong’s works, “Siesta” (1933) and “Pastoral (1933); and also “Pista sa Nayon” (1947) “Pilgrimage to Antipolo” (1959) and “Banda Angono” (1959). Botong’s world of Angono is actually seen (and appreciated) through the eyes of these innocent lads.
Salvador Juban, his long-time protegé and artist assistant, would often further recall, Botong always painted from life and the things he knew.
The Botong work up for bids this month in the Leon Gallery’s The Magnificent September Auction, The Boy of Angono—acquired by Architect Juan Marcos Arellano directly from the artist and thence by descent—depicts a youngster wearing the wide-brimmed straw hat depicted in all of Botong’s lively scenes. Here the boy sits, eyes slightly downcast, carrying a long stick (patpat) and sitting beside an elaborately woven basket with a straw harness that perhaps contains a large dama juana bottle.
It might as well be a self-portrait, or a representation of any or all of his playmates in Angono.
“Mirrored in his works is a kindred nostalgia for a vanished grace, the untutored ease of a people raised on the bounty of the land and the sea; for such is the legacy of the painter who, like them, was himself a dreamer of the native dream,” wrote Guerrero. “Botong’s life is impossible to relate apart from the milieu of his hometown; for Angono was as much a part and parcel of the man as his memory is now an enshrined segment of the town lore.”
The Magnificent September Auction is happening this September 9, 2023, 2 PM, at Eurovilla 1, Rufino corner Legazpi Streets, Legazpi Village, Makati City. Preview week is from September 2 to 8, 2023, from 9 AM to 7 PM. For further inquiries, email info@leon-gallery.com or contact +632 8856-27-81. To browse the catalog, visit www.leon-gallery.com. Follow León Gallery on their social media pages for timely updates: Facebook - www.facebook.com/
Images courtesy of Leon Gallery