(Ed’s note: Leon Gallery’s Adrian Maranan shared with us his feature story about Ambassador Pedro Consul Hernaez, the Filipino civil servant who, in his lifetime, collected significant Juan Luna masterpieces.)

What does the City of Bacolod in Negros Occidental and León Gallery, particularly its year-end sale, The Kingly Treasures Auction 2023, have in common?

They both are endowed with the distinction of having to their respective names specific hallmarks: the former is blessed to have a son who was one of the country’s most distinguished civil servants, while the latter has to its name the discerning eye for museum-quality and culturally significant works of Philippine art.

For León Gallery’s final curtain call for 2023, the intersection between impeccable provenance and a fine masterpiece is underscored, with the spotlight thrust into a political dynamo whose achievements in the field of civil service led him face to face with Luna masterpieces that capture and immortalize one of the greatest Filipino painters. And that man was Ambassador Pedro Conlu Hernaez.

León Gallery curator Lisa Guerrero Nakpil describes Hernaez as “a political paragon from Negros.” He was born in Talisay, Negros Occidental, on 12 December 1899 to Rosendo Espinosa Hernaez and Teofila Echecrecho Conlu. “According to the Cornejo Commonwealth Directory,” Guerrero Nakpil writes, “he obtained his degrees from San Juan de Letran as well as from the Escuela de Derecho.”

Hernaez’s wife was Encarnacion de la Rama, and they had two beautiful daughters: Celina and Cecilia. Cecilia was the founder of the First Farmers Human Development Foundation, an organization dedicated to bringing financial support to displaced farmers. She married Miguel Magsaysay, the mechanical engineer brother of artist Anita Magsaysay-Ho. Miguel, an industrial specialist, founded Magsaysay Lines.

Shortly after his admission to the Philippine bar in 1921, Hernaez went to Manila to practice law, but immediately returned to his native Negros where he became president of the Talisay-Silay Planter Association, thus becoming an “an influential figure in this important Philippine industry,” as Guerrero Nakpil puts it.

Hernaez was elected delegate of Negros Occidental’s second district to the 1934 Constitutional Convention. In 1935, he was elected as assemblyman and represented his Negros Occidental district in the First National Assembly of the Philippines. He was reelected in 1938. He authored “Commonwealth Act No. 326 — An Act Creating the City of Bacolod,” signed into law by President Manuel L. Quezon on 18 June 1938. He was elected senator in the 1941 Philippine general elections, garnering more than 949,000 votes. During the Second World War, he “served the cause of the underground and helped scores of USAFFE prisoners of war without seeking any recompense,” as recounted in “Tableau,” The Encyclopedia of Distinguished Personalities 1958.

Philippine mission

In 1945, President Manuel Roxas appointed him as a member of the Philippine Mission to the United Nations. Years later, President Garcia appointed Hernaez, famously acknowledged as a “practical economist,” as Secretary of Commerce and Industry. He later appointed Hernaez as the Philippine ambassador to Spain, a post he held from 15 September 1960 to 31 March 1962. This position allowed him to encounter the life, works and artistry of the great Juan Luna.

Digging deep into Spain’s most elusive art circles and spaces, he unearthed two rare portraits that reveal the artist’s private, romantic life with his wife, Paz Pardo de Tavera.

One such work, Study of Paz Picking Flowers in a Garden, Guerrero Nakpil describes “as the first part of a series that would include The Study of Paz and a Friend Picking Flowers in a Garden.” The latter work is now found in the National Museum of Fine Arts collection as part of the Andres (Juan and Paz’s architect son) and Grace Luna de San Pedro trove. This same work, under the heading of “He Liked to Paint Portraits of His Family,” was also featured in the 6 October 1957 issue of This Week Magazine in celebration of Luna’s 100th birth anniversary on 25 October 1857.

The Study of Paz Picking Flowers in a Garden, as well as the other study now found in the National Museum, possess Luna’s sublime impressionistic capabilities that offer a breath of fresh air from his more famous works traversing through the realms of academism.

“Both have the loose brushstrokes and lighting that would distinguish the winds of Impressionism that would blow through Paris in the 1860s with the works of Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir,” Guerrero Nakpil points out. “The location would have been in the Paris park, the Bois de Boulogne, which was a few blocks from the Pardo de Tavera home in posh Villa Dupont.” 

“The depiction of Paz in the womanly pursuit of gathering blossoms was perhaps part of his courtship ritual of the attractive heiress who would have been flattered by the focus one needed to paint a portrait.

Both studies would culminate in the romantically elegant Picnic in Normandy, now in the collection of the Jorge B. Vargas Museum of the University of the Philippines.

An equally ravishing and exceptional work from Hernaez’s collection depicts a rare impressionist self-portrait of Luna with his wife. Guerrero Nakpil says of this work: “The second work from the Hernaez Collection depicts an artist carrying a tripod over his shoulder. It’s not clear if, on its end, is an easel or a camera — Juan Luna’s possessions included a “maquina fotografica,” an interest that he may have taken up from his neighbor at Boulevard Arago, Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo. He was also a fanatic about painting en plein air to create immediate and accurate studies.

“The figure is mopping his face with a kerchief and carries a satchel carrying brushes and paints or perhaps, equally plausible, photographic plates— across his body. He is seen emerging from the woods. The shape of the face and hair are strikingly that of Juan Luna.

Both the Study of Paz Picking Flowers in a Garden and Juan Luna and His Wife, Paz, were once stored in Luna’s Parisian studio at No. 65 Boulevard Arago, a few blocks away from where Felix Resureccion Hidalgo also once resided. Both works were also painted between the years 1885 and 1886 when Luna had just relocated to Paris, fresh from his victorious achievement as a gold medal awardee at the 1884 Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes in Madrid for his now-iconic Spoliarium.

The Kingly Treasures Auction is happening today, 2 December, 2 p.m., at Eurovilla 1, Rufino corner Legazpi Streets, Legazpi Village, Makati City. For more inquiries, email [email protected] or contact 8856-2781. To browse the catalog, visit www.leon-gallery.com.

By Adrian Maranan