Scenes from 19th-century Filipino life

Most art cognoscenti are aware that the Damian Domingo album of watercolors at the Newberry Library in Chicago exists. But few have actually seen it, among them are Jaime Laya, Stephen Ongpin, Cynthia O. Valdes, and Ambeth Ocampo. The album has an impeccable pedigree, collected by the American philanthropist Edward Ayer at the turn of the 20th century and formally accessioned by the Newberry Library in 1911. Popularly called tipos del pais, each of the 29 individual images in the album depicting various types of Philippine costumes and people is signed by the artist in Latin on the lower right: Damianus Dominicus pinxit.

Although he is hailed as the Father of Philippine painting, little is known about the 19th-century artist Damian Domingo. Mistakenly believed at first to be a Spanish mestizo, subsequent research revealed him to be of Chinese ancestry. His precise birthdate is unclear, although he is believed to have been born in the 1790s and died sometime in the 1830s. A distinguished miniature portraitist, Damian Domingo established a fine arts school in his home in Tondo about 1821 and was later appointed director of the First Philippine Art Academy.

When attention was first called to Damian Domingo’s artistic achievements, only three signed works were believed to have unquestionable provenance – two oil paintings in the Alfonso Ongpin collection and the album at the Newberry Library – and one unsigned oil painting, also in the Ongpin collection. Through the years, more unsigned oil paintings and three unsigned tipos del pais albums resembling the signed album at the Newberry have come to light and are now similarly attributed to the artist.

My first encounter with the legendary Newberry album was in 2001. With protective gloves and trustworthy magnifying loupe in hand, heart racing, and low-blood pressure steadily rising from sheer excitement, I paused as the album was placed before me, savoring the anticipation and suspense – for the most titillating thrill often lies in the chase, not the final conquest. Slowly, gingerly opening the weathered cover, I gasped upon beholding for the first time the title page. It was not the same as the other Damian Domingo albums in Manila!

Not only is the title page different, the size and paper used are different as well, the Newberry images being substantially larger, and painted on European laid paper, the first several pages bearing a crown-like watermark similar to 19th-century German paper manufactured in the Bodensee region, and the rest of the pages bearing the watermark Harris 1817, thus conveniently indicating a fixed terminus post quem, or date after which the album was made. In contrast, at least two similar albums in Manila are almost half the size, painted on smaller individual sheets of a rare and difficult material called "pith paper" which is technically not paper at all but hand- manufactured by cutting spirally from the pith of the Tetrapanax papyriferum, a plant that grows in the hills of northern Taiwan and known in China as kung-shu. This material – often mistakenly called "rice paper" – was frequently employed in 19th-century Chinese gouache paintings made for export to Europe as souvenirs. Such paintings usually depict Chinese women’s costumes and various livelihoods. The material’s surface has a distinctive cell-like structure that is visible under magnification 10 times stronger than my loupe.

Manufactured as souvenirs for foreign visitors in the 19th century, the Manila albums are almost always described as watercolors, although they are more accurately designated as gouache – also water-based pigments but with more body and brilliance than the more transparent watercolor. Whereas the unsigned Manila albums are neatly entitled in Spanish at the bottom border, the original titles of the individually signed Newberry images have clearly been adjusted to incorporate both English and Spanish versions. Closer scrutiny of the images also reveals significant differences between the Newberry and Manila albums in the manner of rendering the individual figures – differences which will have to be discussed in greater detail in a more scholarly forum than this column.

What is perplexing is that such significant details have not been noted before in the published literature on the albums. In fact, the Newberry and Manila albums have often been described inaccurately as being nearly identical. Not that there is a glut of published material on the subject beyond the informative monographs on the artist by Stephen Ongpin (Manila, 1983) and Luciano Santiago (Manila, 1990).

Each encounter with the Newberry album is an experience different from the first, always a reacquaintance with an old but enigmatic friend. I revisited the album in 2002, an annual pilgrimage of sorts. There were the telltale watermarks on the laid paper, but further study made it obvious that large sheets had been folded in half to create the classic folio, with different watermarks on each folded section of the same paper – the crown-like image (deceptively similar to a German watermark from the Bodensee) on one side, and Harris 1817 on the other. Thus, there is not a combination of two different types of paper as the first visit had suggested. And so the chase continues – new secrets to be revealed, new mysteries unraveled – when I next visit my friend Damian Domingo at the Newberry.

* * *

Florina H. Capistrano-Baker received her Ph.D. in Art History from Columbia University in New York City in 1997. She was the Pacific and Island Southeast Asian specialist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from 1987-1994 and author of the book Art of Island Southeast Asia: The Fred and Rita Richman Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1994). E-mail the writer at ninaloupe @yahoo. com.