José Honorato Lozano (1821 - 1885)
Letras y’ Figuras (Views of Manila)
signed (lower right) Ca. 1850
gouache and watercolor on paper
22” x 33” (56 cm x 84 cm)
Literature: Roces, Alfredo. Felix Resurrección Hidalgo & The Generation of 1872. Eugenio Lopez Foundation, Inc., 1998, p. 66.
WRITE UP:
This enchanting work in watercolor by Jose Honorato Lozano from the 1840s shows a vanished, magnificent Manila inevitably altered by the 1863 and 1880 earthquakes, Spanish decline, Revolution, American modernization, the World War II holocaust, postwar demolitions, and careless city administrations. The painting is composed of three horizontal panels: the top and bottom panels have three sections each while the middle panel is a panoramic view of the Manila Bay
The first section of the top panel shows Calle Anloague in Binondo (“Street of the Carpenters,” now Juan Luna street leading to the Divisoria entrepot) where several foreign trading firms are headquartered. We see an all–stone building or house on the left with the flag of the United States of America (in the 1840s), it is likely the head office of an American trading firm.
t can be disputed that this is a view of Calzada de San Sebastian [now R Hidalgo street] with its rows of elegant houses. The said street rose in importance during the 1830s when the rich of the long–established arrabales (districts) of Intramuros, Binondo, and Santa Cruz, in an effort to escape their crowded and smelly communities, started constructing big urban villas with the (then unheard–of) luxury of fruit and vegetable gardens and passable, clean estuaries/waterways at the back which were impossible to build in the older arrabales. However, the view really seems to be that of Calle Anloague, which is a much more important street at the time than Calzada de San Sebastian.)
The initial letter V is composed of well–dressed, hat–wearing laborers carrying logs. The letter I is formed by a well–dressed native woman with a parasol and her companions.
The second/middle section of the top panel shows a view of the commercial buildings, warehouses, and big houses lining the Pasig river from Santa Cruz to Binondo to Tondo (right to left). (This brings to mind personalities like the very rich Don Narciso Padilla, who during this exact time owns a fleet of ships, boats, and cascos [big bamboo rafts] which carries goods from the Pasig river all the way up north to the Ilocos and all the way down south to the Visayas, as well as rows of warehouses that stretch from Binondo to Tondo. This shipping and logistics empire is inherited by his daughter Dona Maria Barbara Padilla y Flores [“Dona Baritay”] who subsequently becomes known as La Reina de Rio Pasig because of her immense shipping and warehousing businesses; she becomes the mother of the master painter Don Felix Resurrección Hidalgo y Padilla.)
The letter E is formed by laborers carrying logs and an ambulant Chinese vendor selling lugaw rice porridge and its condiments as well as gupit noodles to his hungry customers. The letters W and S are composed of veiled women and well–dressed men.
The third section of the top panel shows a bahay kubo/nipa hut in a rustic setting which is probably the Gagalangin area in Tondo, even then the most populous district of the city. There is a simple couple huddling in a bamboo shed. Tondo in the 1800s, specially the Gagalangin area with its charming front gardens, is a pleasant residential district inhabited by people of modest means but also by some of the richest families in Manila with fortunes from international and domestic trading, warehousing, manufacturing, financing, and even micro-financing. Tondo in the 1800s up to the prewar was a vastly different community compared to what it is today.
The second section is a panoramic view of the Manila Bay with many ships and boats. It is a beautiful, swimmable beach with fine sand, just like all the lovely beaches of Las Islas Filipinas. Tragically, the Americans would fill it with boulders, stones, and sand to make Dewey boulevard (now Roxas boulevard) during the early 1900s.
There is a succession of interesting vignettes on the beachfront. From the left going right, we see a young, well–dressed principalia couple of the ruling class on their horses; two men with sparring roosters (cockfighting); a man on a carabao; the letter O formed by a man inside a casco (raft) or a boat; a mother and child just finished bathing in the sea; the letter F formed by a couple pounding rice on a wooden mortar; a female vendor with a small tapayan / earthenware water container on her head, a male vendor balancing a pole hung with 2 baskets, a mature, well–dressed principalia couple, and a female vendor selling rice cakes she is preparing on a papag or bamboo daybed.
The first section of the bottom panel shows a view outside Intramuros looking north to the Pasig river. From the left, we see the Puente de Espana (Bridge of Spain) which has been there since 1630, the Pasig river, the Magellan monument, and the Maestranza wall. The Maestranza is a long portion of the Intramuros walls facing north to the Pasig river with many chambers built in the early 1600s to accommodate soldiers as well as all sorts of goods being traded downstream and upstream. There is a big woven rice thresher in the middle of it all, likely for the processing of rice being grown in the areas around Intramuros.
The letter M is formed by musicians with a harp and guitar with chickens on top. The letter A is composed of a man amidst bamboo
The second/middle section of the bottom panel shows the Plaza Mayor of Intramuros with the three major buildings flanking it: We see the Manila Cathedral in the middle (south), the Palacio del Gobernador on the right (west), and the Ayuntamiento/Casas Consistoriales on the left (east). It is still about 20 years before the great earthquake of 1863 which will level them all.
(It is after that devastation that the Governor–General will transfer the seat of power to the far more modest riverside villa in the nearby San Miguel district that is the Palacio de Malacanan. The transfer of the Governor–General to San Miguel impels the rich --- specially the Spanish peninsular and the Spanish mestizo rich --- to construct grand villas with sprawling lush gardens in the area, setting off the most European incarnations of the Filipino bahay–na– bato. The idea of luxurious urban villas conceived in Calzada de San Sebastian achieves perfection in nearby San Miguel. Calle General Solano and Calle Aviles become the most fashionable addresses of the Filipino rich towards the end of the Spanish regime in 1898.)
The letter N is formed by women with a horse. The letter I is composed of a group of men with top hats and women. The letter L is made up of a bahay kubo, a big woven rice thresher, a man with sacks, and other men
The third section of the bottom panel shows the Binondo church with a frontage of greenery (unbelievable to contemporary eyes). It looks like an orchard with rows of fruit trees.
The final letter A is formed by an old woman cooking with palayok earthenware pots, and there is a Chinese vendor balancing a pole from which hang a pair of tapayan vessels, probably filled with clean water.
Jose Honorato Lozano was one of several painters in Manila during the first half of the 1800s, along with the pioneering Damian Domingo, Juan Arzeo, and the younger Antonio Malantic and Justiniano Asuncion (“Capitan Ting”). In the tradition of miniaturismo (highly detailed art) popular in those days, Lozano specialized in the quaint art of letras y figuras, in which a full name was exquisitely spelled out with letters formed by vignettes with all kinds of subjects --- people, animals, plants, musical instruments, conveyances, landscape views, etc. These incredibly detailed works charmed the affluent locals who hung them in their reception rooms as well as the expatriate Spaniards and other Europeans who commissioned and brought them home as souvenirs of an exotic Asian sojourn.
This utterly charming Views of Manila from the erudite Benito J. Legarda , Jr. collection was likely commissioned by a British or American client. The work in watercolor was signed por Jose Honorato Lozano in elegant script on the lower right side. It is not known how it made its way to Legarda’s collection; it could have been acquired from a prominent Filipino family but it was most likely purchased from leading rare maps and books dealers in the USA or the UK (many of whom were his longtime friends), as were many of Legarda’s Filipiniana collections. This Jose Honorato Lozano Views of Manila stands on its own as a great Filipino work of art and an important, unassailable pictorial document of Spanish Manila as it was in the 1840s, almost two hundred years ago.
