Single ladies & self-love in the age before tinder and bumble
Valentine’s Day seems to be as irrelevant and coy these days as its opposite, the Lonely Hearts Club—which even in its heyday with the Beatles in 1967 was laced with LSD and silly Sgt. Pepper circus costumes.
But what happened to the single ladies who never put a ring on it in the age before Tinder and Bumble? In fact, what was it really like 100 years ago for the poor old maid?
It seems that the idea of self-love is not all that new and the answer seems to have been in Filipinas cultivating the talents they were prevented from doing so in the schools and colleges and instead finding them in the twin worlds of creativity and imagination.
Two pioneering women of the 19th-century were the first to explore themselves in the world of art. They were heiresses to one of the richest men in the Philippines, Don Maximo Molo Paterno—rom different wives. (There’s a lesson in there somewhere!) They managed to prevail on their otherwise strait-laced families to allow them to learn how to paint.
Her teachers, according to scholar Emmanuel Torres, included students of the Manila Academia, Felix Martinez and Teodoro Buenaventura, as well as one of the art academy’s most well-known teachers, Lorenzo Guerrero. Guerrero is best remembered in art history for having mentored Jose Rizal and Juan Luna but he was also a sought-after tutor of the capital’s society girls. In the end, he would finally elope with one of them, Clemencia Ramirez, in a tale worthy of any triumphant Valentine’s Day. Her father objected so strenuously to the match that he banished Clemencia to Marikina and Guerrero would have to disguise himself as a priest in order to visit. (On the day of their wedding, the bells tolled a funeral dirge on orders of her family.)
Guerrero’s star pupils were the Paterno pair of half-sisters, the first being Paz. One of her few remaining works reposes in the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas collection. Dated 1884, it is believed to be one of the earliest surviving works of art by a woman in the Philippines.
It’s a Philippine cornucopia of fruit and nuts—lanzones and casuy tumbling down a tree with a butterfly gently perched on a branch nearby. Flowers recognizable as the psychotropic angel’s trumpet or talampunay. (Here’s another nod to acid, probably brought from the Amazon by the Galleon Trade.) In the distance, Manila Bay with a single fishing boat can be seen.
Her half-sister Adelaida was a far more sentimental character, excelling in the art of working human hair with gold and sister threads. One rare work passed through the doors of Leon Gallery and was quickly snapped up because of its romantic rarity. It depicted a solitary woman traveling down a winding road with a clay pot balanced on her head. A nipa hut with windows thrown wide open sits by a bamboo grove.
Working with hair is a curious art that represented the Victorian fascination for the morbid, the forbidden, and—yes—the lost love.
Adelaida would wreath this medallion with the pansy, also a very particular Victorian flower whose hidden message was “I am always thinking of you.” Beside it is a black butterfly, which may point to a dearly departed swain. A butterfly’s life is, after all, notoriously short-lived and fleeting, a symbol perhaps of a gentleman’s easily changed affections. And as a true memento mori (or remembrance of life’s passing), there are flowers embroidered as both buds and wilting blooms.
Incidentally, neither of these Paterno women would ever marry. (A portrait of another single lady, the Italian noblewoman Irene della Rocca, is a highlight of the upcoming Leon Gallery Asian Cultural Council auction. The first of the year, it is always earmarked to help raise funds for Filipino artists eager to join a global community of creators. The depiction of this fetching maiden is by none other than Juan Luna.)
Of course, the patron saint of unwed artists would be none other than Nena Saguil. Striking out on her own from the Philippine Art Gallery to make her own mark in the Ecole de Paris, Nena Saguil would give it all up—love included—for the sake of art. It’s not surprising that she would do that once she had drunk of the heady air of one of the greatest art capitals of the world.
She would, however, be mesmerized by one of her most significant mentors in the late 1950s, Alfred Manessier (1911-1993); but nothing would come of that, except for a series of striking paintings she herself would call “Lyrical Cubism.” (It’s not entirely clear if Manessier’s retreat to a Trappist monastery and his increasingly ascetic lifestyle had anything to do with that non-starter of a romance.)
There are several Saguil works to be seen at both Art Fair PH from Feb. 21-23 and the upcoming Leon Gallery Asian Cultural Council Auction.
The most striking pictures dark universes that seem to be traveling in space. It is illuminated by an otherworldly light that comes from fallen stars and fragmented moons—and yes, quite potentially, the sensation of falling out of love. Cid Reyes would later write, “The late critic Leo Benesa wrote of 'stillness’ and 'nightness’ as distinguishing qualities of her paintings. Her works affirm the consistent themes of Saguil: order and serenity, the solitude and mystery of the cosmos, and exploration of man’s sense of eternity.”
Saguil, who died in 1994, is increasingly coming to larger national prominence, since her inclusion in the last Venice Biennale’s big thematic exhibition titled “Foreigners Everywhere.” This Valentine’s Day, there’s no better way than to describe that sense of being an outsider.
