22. FELIX GONZALES GOT EBAYED

I am an armchair art lover, driven primarily, I confess, by laziness. The past year, I haven’t done much gallery-hopping, especially those located in malls; noisy mall crowds turn me off. I prefer the solitude of browsing through the net at your own time and pace, checking what’s out on my favorite online auctions like ebay.

 Ebay.com to me is one big, happy international flea market—you’ll never know what will turn up once you do a quick search. I just type in “Philippine painting” and a listing will instantly be generated of all the Philippine-made paintings available for sale, new and old, made by all sorts of painters—some crappy, a few named artists, and on very rare occasions, by well-known Filipino masters.

 The works of Isidro Ancheta, C.V. Lopez, Ben Alano, Oscar Navarro, Jose B. David, Gabriel Custodio, Edouard Perrenoud, Romeo Tabuena, Cesar Buenaventura, I have seen on ebay. An Ang Kiukok was offered once, and even an Amorsolo work—unsigned but with what seemed like an authentic provenance--was put up on ebay. I remember bidding on that oleo with my friends: the subject was a woman carrying a pot and it was being sold by an Austrian dealer whose grandfather had worked at the University of Sto. Tomas where, the dealer claimed, the painting was given to him by THE Fernando Amorsolo.

 I lost, of course, and the winner, a Pinoy doctor from the U.S. won the masterpiece for a little more than $8,000—dirt-cheap, by any standard. A few days after, the bidding story was reported by Butch Dalisay in his column which was entitled “An Amorsolo on ebay”, detailing the fever-pitch war between the last two men standing--‘arcastro57’ and ‘drpineda’, with the latter finally winning and “laughing all the way to the bank”. In my collecting life, that probably ranks as “the biggest one that got away”.

 A week ago, on the same online auction site, I chanced upon a dealer’s items for sale that included three Philippine paintings. The first two were 1940s mixed media paintings signed by a certain Lingat, typical of cheap artworks sold in Manila shops. The third though was signed “F. Gonzales” from the 50s and I knew at once that this was Felix Pinto Gonzales (b. 2 May 1902, Navotas), a U.P. trained artist who worked in the realist tradition and whose works had appeared in Graphic Magazine before the War. The dealer had apparently misread the artist's signature.

 At one point in the 1950s, he served as President of the Academy of Filipino Artists. He set up a gallery at the Manila Hotel and also forayed in nearby Angeles City where his Pacific landscapes, ethnic types, portraits and velvet paintings found a willing American market. Felix Gonzales,who married Concepcion Sanchez,  is largely unknown till now, thanks in part to renewed and growing interest in the so-called “Mabini Art”. Felix’s own son, Federico and grandsons, Ferdel, Froilan and Dennis, are today, talented painters themselves and their works resonate with their late father’s exuberant spirit. The artist died with a smile on his lips,on 11 Dec. 1976--after completing his last painting of a blooming flower.

 This particular ebay painting I was eyeing had quite a commonplace, but appealing subject—a boy riding a carabao out on a frolic—a favorite visual theme of Filipiniana artists that celebrates the lost, innocent joys of rural childhood. This was no Amorsolo, but this work is becoming more collectible. Besides, it was painted very well, the colors subdued, the size perfect. Most of all, there was a strong Kapampangan connection which I favor. The only drawback was that it had a reserved price, meaning, and, until that price-- unknown to the buyer-- is reached, the Seller will not sell.

 In a few days, there was already one enthusiastic bidder. I kept telling myself that I would bid close to the ending time, but I never got around to doing that—I am lazy, remember? The bidding came to an end, the reserved price was not met, and the painting didn’t sell. Worse, the painting was not relisted, another case of another one that got away.

 But just two days after, another painting surfaced from a dealer in Florida—he had a smaller painting of yet again, a typical, overdone Filipino subject: a bahay kubo under a palm tree with the usual rural landscape in the background. But it was beautifully painted with characteristic short strokes, serene colors and a certain moodiness that’s so Filipino. The 1955 painting, in its original scruffy frame, was signed, according to the dealer, by a certain “R. Gonzales.”

Of course, by this time, I have become so familiar with the way Gonzales signed his work—he signed using the initials of his first and middle name, followed by his last name. His F(elix) merged with his P(into) so much so that to an untrained eye, the linked letters would look like R.

 Two Gonzales paintings in two days, offered by two different sellers. This must be more than just coincidence, I told myself. And I promised that this time around, I will own a Felix Gonzales vintage painting. In the dying hours of the auction, I checked the item and it had already 2 bids, the top bid being $63. I put in my maximum bid, turned off my computer and went to sleep.

 The next day, it was my turn to laugh all the way to the (rural) bank. Felix Gonzales was mine!

(28 May 2009)
  
(POSTSCRIPT: When I contacted the Florida dealer to inform him I bidded all the way from the Philippines, he responded by writing “Maraming salamat po!”. It turned out that the seller was a kabayan, which makes the painting truly and proudly Philippine made!)