Fabian de la Rosa and His Times

This book fills the gap in the history of Philippine art. Unaccountably, our cultural writers have neglected Fabián de la Rosa, though he dominated Philippine painting, as both practitioner and teacher — in the first third of the twentieth century. It was the home-crown Fabian de la Rosa — rather than the European-trained Juan Luna and Felix Resurrección Hidalgo--who brought to full flower the indigenous tradition of "vigorous genre pictures and elegant portraits" that had flourished in the nineteenth century. It is the exuberant and romantic Fernando Amorsolo who represents this era in the popular imagination, but a painting like Planting Rice (on the cover) shows off the crisp virtuosity of Fabian de la Rosa’s more austere palette. The publishers have done Philippine art history a signal service.

-Juan T. Gatbonton

Published in 2007 by UP Vargas Museum

132 pages / Paperback