There’s a lot to choose from, given that a million items might be available online at any moment, 24 hours a day, all around the world, from Egyptian scarabs to the newest 3G cellphones. Most of the time, I don’t actually buy anything – wish I had the loose change to get that 1961 VW Cabriolet or that chalet overlooking Lake Lucerne, but I don’t – so I get my kicks, like many impoverished shopaholics (now there’s a cruel oxymoron for you) do, from ogling the merchandise, licking my lips, and praying to God that I win the lotto (with 50 percent of my winnings to be donated, of course, to charity, and all that).
When I’ve gotten my daily gadgets-and-gizmos fix, I move on to more sober pursuits, like looking up the listings under "Philippines" (i.e., punch in "Philippines" as your search term, and see what’s being sold that has anything to do with the Philippines). Occasionally, I’ve picked up old books and postcards this way, although much of the trade seems to be in stamps, coins, and the usual tourist curios, like Hard Rock Café Manila T-shirts.
That’s how and where I came across this intriguing item and what would turn out to be a thriller of a bidding war – not to mention the mystery of how a painting by a Filipino master would find itself half the world away in Austria.
Someone either made a killing – or got majorly soaked – on eBay last week, when a painting attributed to National Artist Fernando Amorsolo (1892-1972) was bought by a successful bidder trading under the pseudonym of "drpineda" for just over $8,100 – some P450,000, by today’s exchange rates. The painting depicted a woman carrying an earthen jar; it was signed "F. Amorsolo 1951" and, in its wooden frame, measured 51 x 41 cm.
Half a million pesos is a long way gone from the first bid of $85 posted a week earlier by someone styling himself, not too shyly, as "ang-pogi-ko," but still a far cry from the P1.3 to P1.8 million that Amorsolos of this period and size have been known to get, according to a friend who runs an art gallery.
All the amounts were actually denominated in deutschmarks (DM); the painting itself was located in Graz, Austria’s second largest city (I thought the Austrians used schillings, but never mind), and was being sold by a seller going by the name of "surfwave."
Over seven days, the painting racked up 50 bids – many from the same persons, obviously Pinoys, trying to outdo one another, bidding under such pseudonyms as "arcastro," "mrphilippines," "aerophilatelist," "maranao," "milareen," and "lovelyvalentine." "Lovelyvalentine" and "ang-pogi-ko" dropped out early in the game. The last day’s frenetic bidding came down to a battle of wits, bank accounts, and computer mice between "arcastro," "mrphilippines," and the ultimately triumphant "drpineda," who showed his hand early on and – like the seasoned eBayer he (or she?) seems to be – vanished to reappear only in the last crucial hours with a bid that would prove too steep, but not by much, for the competition.
The bidding was scheduled to end July 30 at 11:24 p.m., US Pacific Time. At 10:55 p.m., "drpineda" weighed in with a bid of DM18,100, which would prove enough to secure the painting. The bidding history (which you can get on the site after the whole thing is over, to see who wagered exactly how much exactly when) shows "arcastro" and "mrphilippines" frantically bidding against "drpineda" in the last 90 minutes, seeking to dislodge him from the top bidder’s post. At 11:22 p.m., with two minutes to spare, "arcastro" put in his (or maybe again, her) final bid of DM18,000; unknown to him, he was only 101 deutschmarks, or about $45, short of winning an Amorsolo. If he had really drawn the line at DM18,000, or if he tried to log in just one more time to raise the ante, only to be defeated by the clock and everything that can go wrong with an Internet connection just when you need it, we’ll never know now. By the time "arcastro" received his customary end-of-auction message from eBay ("The auction is over; unfortunately, you lost…"), "drpineda" was probably whistling his way to the bank, preparing to draw a manager’s check.
Curious to find out something more about "drpineda," I looked into his recent purchases and established that he had a taste for old books and fine art, and was most likely based, like the other bidders, in the United States. Just before he got the Graz painting, he had bought, for $75 from a seller in New Jersey, a rare first-edition of an art book published by the Philippine Education Company in 1929 devoted to Fernando Amorsolo, Fabian de la Rosa, and other Filipino masters. (It doesn’t take a genius to surmise that the bookseller, "noypi," was also a Filipino.)
And what about the Amorsolo’s seller, "surfwave"? Exactly like "drpineda," he had an all-positive eBay feedback rating of 24, which meant that at least 24 eBay customers had done business with him and found no cause to complain. (It isn’t foolproof, but the feedback rating is your only way of knowing if you’re dealing with a bonafide businessman or a crook; some eBayers have ratings of over 1,000; mine is 56.) Midway through the bidding, I couldn’t resist jumping into the water (or, at least, sticking my toes in), and I wrote "surfwave" an e-mail expressing my (wishful) interest in bidding for the painting and asking him about its provenance.
The real question on my mind, of course, was: Is it really an Amorsolo? If it was, and not too many people knew about it, then I could hock the family farm (and, heck, half the family as well), buy the painting, resell the painting, and retire on the profits to write novels in the south of France (or maybe even Graz!). This, no doubt, also occurred to many of those who actually dared to put in real, legally-binding bids.
The fly in the ointment is our own little tradition of art fakery and forgery. Poking around the Internet, I came across places like the Artwatch site (www.geocities.com/SoHo/Atrium/3926/geobook.html) where very interesting, albeit unverified, stories abound about alleged forgers and scammers in the Philippine art scene. Check out this site before plunking down a million for that bargain "Luna." On March 30 and April 6, 1998, the Philippine Star also came out with two fascinating articles by Reuben Ramas Canete detailing the unmasking of a forged painting attributed to Alfredo Carmelo (1896-1985). Amorsolo, like many other Filipino masters, has been a favorite of art forgers, and the sheer size and variety of his output – he undertook many private commissions, with quite a number of his works ending up abroad – makes him a formidable subject for scholarship.
The standard reference on Amorsolo seems to be the monograph by Alfredo Roces (Filipinas Foundation, 1975), but not having the book at hand, I resorted to my next-best alternative, an art restorer and conservator who’s been looking at dozens of Amorsolos in a major collection for the past couple of months. It’s impossible – if not downright irresponsible – to come to a firm conclusion from a picture the size of a matchbox, but my live source seemed to think, from the apparent depth of the cracks on the paint surface around the signature area (which the seller helpfully magnified), that there was too much paint in a spot where Amorsolo tended to use much less. But then again, it was impossible to tell from a thumbnail.
Just before the auction ended, I got a message from the seller that might just throw some light on the Amorsolo on eBay. Here’s his message, verbatim:
"Hey I hope you could understand me. My English is not very well. This Olipainting is from my grandfather. He worked on the Philppienes. Im not a expert, but the picture seems in a good condition. In the coloures are few cracks (not in the canvas) On the backside is a paper from Universety of Santo Thomas (Museum of Arts and Siences) it looks realy good I hope I could help you. Mark"
And I hope that "drpineda" enjoys his painting, even as I enjoy my little mystery – which, something tells me, has just begun.