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| ZAMBALES LANDSCAPE, 24" x 30", oil on canvas, signed Jose Hernandez, 1983. |
When Facebook was founded in 2004, it was only a matter
of time that sellers and dealers discovered it as an effective selling
platform. Which was why, in 2016, Facebook launched its Facebook Marketplace that
continues to be a convenient destination on
social media to discover, buy and sell items with people in one’s
community.
It was in this way that I stumbled on a painting offered
by dealer Kenito Romero, who had posted it, along with other picks on the said
selling site. I had previously bought a
Ben Alano portrait from Kenito, who, when not on assignment in Qatar doing
aircraft maintenance, also dabbles in freelance selling of collectible like
antiques and paintings.
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| THE PAINTING, AS IT APPEARED FOR SALE ON A FACEBOOK GROUP. |
This was, however, my first time to see a Jose Hernandez
painting offered for sale from a picker—usually I see these in galleries and
personal collections. I have always wanted a Hernandez artwork, as I am partial
to the works of Kapampangan artists, of the “Mabini-style” kind, and Hernandez’s
works reflect this style. He was more partial to large-scale themes, and I have
seen these in paintings capturing town fiestas teeming with people, sprawling
landscapes, and Amorsolo-esque rural scenes.
Jose Hernandez was actually born in Tondo, Manila on 22 September 1944. The family, however, moved to Pampanga after the war, when his father, a
lawyer, accepted a teaching job at the Harvardian College, a local law school
in San Fernando. By 1948, the Hernandezes were well-settled; they had also established the Luzon Women’s Fashion Academy beginning
that year.
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| SIGNATURE OF JOSE W. HERNANDEZ |
Jose Hernandez, nicknamed “Boy” showed an early interest
in the arts. As early as Grade IV at the Assumption Academy, he would use his notebooks to doodle and draw at the expense of his school work. As a teen, he earned extra
money as a painter- apprentice in a movie theater sign shop owned by Nards
Mendoza. He was painting even as he started his high school at Pampanga High
School. In his senior year, he was given a scholarship by Pres. Diosdado
Macapagal, allowing him to graduate in 1963.
But his heart was in the arts, so, in the mid 60s, he
pursued this passion under the mentorship of future National Artist, Fernando
Amorsolo, Carlos “Botong” Francisco and Vicente Manansala. At the same time, he
was also visiting the studios of such
popular artists as Simon Saulog, Cesar Buenaventura, and Miguel
Galvez. He totally abandoned his education to learn art from these masters.
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| HERNANDEZ PAINTINGS ONLINE Sources: alamy stock photos/worthpoint.com |
In 1965, he was honored to join his idols in a group
exhibit held at the National Library.
Later in the decade, his paintings were carried in the Angeles gallery
of Conrado Zablan. Finally, he struck it on his own by opening his own gallery
along Friendship Highway in 1974.
In 1980, he made it in the international scene with an
exhibition of his works at the Fine Arts Gallery in Spokane, Washington. It was
from this period that this mountainscape from Facebook Marketplace was painted.
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| NOTE THE CONDITION OF THE PAINTING, that has been glued on plywood, and framed. |
When it arrived at my doorstep, this large 24” x 30” was
in dire condition. It had been glued to a thin plywood, as it was the custom to
keep the canvass flat, and it was coming off from the frame, which seemed too
small to hold it. At the back, a dedication was inscribed with a pentel pen:
“To Sammy, A Remembrance & Thanks for Everything. Robert Domingo P.D.” ( A quick google check revealed a certain Robert Domingo, a Production Designer for movies)
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| DEDICATION, written in pentel pen on masking tape at the back of the painting. |
The seller, Kenito, told me that it had hanged in a
restaurant in Tagaytay for years, which explains its sorry state.Exposed to the
elements, the painting had sustained many scruffs and accumulated layers of
dirt, I had to clean it at once, first with sponge and soap, followed with a
generous rub of Wipe-Out cream. The original colors came alive, and the brush
stroke details revealed that this could have been painted briskly, and
quickly—on-the-spot.
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| THE CANVAS, as found was glued to a plywood board that revealed a paper sticker about its provenance. |
I was so bothered that it had been glued on a plywood, so
I set about trying to pry the canvas out. After a few, firm tugs, the canvas
started to come off—thank God, the rubber glue had completely dried off. It took awhile for me to pry the canvass
loose, as even with careful peeling, all that pulling I added more scruffs and
scratches to the painting.
To my surprise, I found a sticker on the plywood
to which the canvas had been affixed. I
could not avoid tearing the sticker to pieces, but I pieced it together like a jigsaw puzzle,
revealing important information about the painting and its provenance,
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| RECONSTRUCTED STICKER , shows the piece came from Genesis Gallery. |
The sticker yielded the name of the gallery it had come
from: Gallery Genesis, a well-known gallery still extant today, based in Pasig. It also confirmed
that Jose Hernandez was the artist behind the painting, entitled “Zambales
Landscape”, painted in 1983. The rest of the information, unfortunately, is
unreadable due to the damage I caused, but all I needed to know was there.
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| ZAMBALES LANDSCAPE,restored detail. |
The scene is actually a portion of the grand Zambales
mountain range, and it shows a peak that looks like Mt. Dorst, painted from the
Pampanga side. The trees, foliage and vegetation were painted with quick,
energetic short strokes, which suggest that this artwork was painted in situ--the artist had tom paint quickly as he was at the mercy of the fickle outdoor weather, The deft handling of the perspective using different shades of
blues and greys, and elements like the tiny nipa huts, and the mountains beyond-- give us a sense of the great distance and vast grandeur of this great mountain divide.
Next came the business of having the painting retouched
and re-framed. For this part of the job, I sought the service of local painter,
Roy L. Datu, a longtime artist since 1967, with a studio along Don Juico Ave., It also helped that Datu knew the painter personally. Datu’s
specialties are portraiture and painting restoration, one of the few to have
mastered the tedious art. But it took just two weeks for him to finish the
restoration job, and double-frame the painting--which he did commendably, as
these pictures show.
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| RESTORED AND REFRAMED "ZAMBALES LANDSCAPE" |
Though the rest of the 80s and the 1990s were a period of
relative stability and success --he
opened a frame shop in Bacoor in 1988, was a finalist in the 1995 International
Art Competition in Bardonia, New York, and had his “Fiesta” painting reproduced
as a UNICEF Christmas Card----Hernandez began having bouts with depression, that
grew worse in the 1990s.
While he had weathered the challenges of a struggling
artist, his mental illness, compounded by his personal problems, proved to be a more difficult mountain to climb. Sometime in the late 1990s, he decided to end
it all by taking his own life by hanging. His works today are avidly sought
after by discriminating collectors who value the realist tradition with themes made popular by Amorsolo, of which Hernandez was one true master.
