The Manila Times

Provenance and the venerable Maribel Ongpin

SAUL HOFILEÑA JR.

AT the height of the pandemic, I wrote a book about the brilliant architect, Andres Luna de San Pedro, the only child of the ill-fated Juan Luna and titled the book Luna, Arquitecto. After its publication, I got calls from numerous friends, asking me to authenticate their Juan Luna paintings. Huh? Due to continued inquiries, I thought it best to call on Mrs. Maribel Ongpin, a person who put in years of study on Philippine art and a former trustee of the National Museum of the Philippines. She once wrote an article about provenance which I clipped. A sprightly 85 years old who regularly plays golf and whose memory is as sharp as a blade, Mrs. Ongpin outlined to me the necessary steps of properly authenticating works of art.

There are two methods for detecting forgery, she said, although neither of which is definitive.

The first is connoisseurship, or the study of an artist’s work by a specialist who has become familiar with the artist’s trademark style.

The second method is the forensic study of artworks which requires scientific equipment, training and the ability to recognize the results of the scientific data gathered. Then Mrs. Ongpin said that the genuineness of paintings can also be established by their provenance — the where and when, and from whom the artworks were acquired.

She said that simple facts can be the foundation to establish authenticity. She cited an example: A Fernando Amorsolo painting was on sale; it once belonged to our mutual friend Dr. Benito Legarda who was a historian, an art connoisseur and collector. Since the said painting came from Dr. Legarda’s estate, there can be no doubt about its authenticity. There are also collections of sterling provenance like the Luis Araneta, Far Eastern University, Joven Cuanang, Norma and Eddie Chua collections because they bought their stuff directly from the artists. Furthermore, Mrs. Ongpin emphasized that the seller and authenticator of an artwork should not be one and the same person, for obvious reasons.

What about the children of artists, are they credible authenticators of their parents’ works of art? Can their authentication be taken as gospel truth, especially if they were not present at the time their parents were working on their masterpieces? I believe not since blood does not carry memory.

Mrs. Ongpin also said that it is important to establish the chain of custody, i.e., who else owned the painting after it left the easel of the painter and before it landed in the hands of its current owner.

If the artwork carries an authentication by an expert, the expert must disclose his bona fides and the amount he has been paid to make the authentication, who paid him, and the reasons he declared that the painting is authentic and such declarations must be in affidavit form and notarized.

If the artwork has been authenticated as genuine by a relative of the artist, you must ask him to subscribe to an affidavit, which would state why he said that the artwork is genuine. Was he present when his relative painted the artwork? How is he related to the artist?

Hearsay evidence should also not be considered. What is hearsay? Let me digress a moment to explain this in a very simple and general way. A person may be a witness if he has organs of sense that can perceive, and perceiving can make known his perception to others. If a declaration is hearsay, then that person makes known the perception of somebody else, e.g., X subscribes to an oath that Y told him that he saw Z making the painting. The declarant’s observation in the cited example was derived outside of his personal knowledge and is therefore hearsay evidence.

By the way, never accept polygraph test results, the Supreme Court in a case has ruled that they are unreliable.

I have purchased paintings and almost all of them were purchased directly from the artist. To serve as proof of authenticity, I required the artist to take a picture of himself beside his painting or holding it, and if possible, to take pictures with cars as the background. This was an old modus operandi adopted by the head of the Federal Art Project (FAP). The FAP was established by Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression as part of his New Deal Program. At its peak, it employed 5,000 people including artists who did murals on public buildings.

The FAP also employed photographers tasked to take photographs of the people and places in the United States. The FAP Photographic Section Head instructed his photographers to take pictures of ordinary folks in ordinary circumstances with automobiles as backgrounds. This scheme was adopted to determine the approximate date when the pictures were taken — a sort of documentation on wheels, so to speak.

The recurring controversies hounding authentication of artworks made me bring the Garibay paintings in my collection to the painter himself, whom I haven’t seen for almost 20 years and who happily obliged to have photos taken of him beside each of his paintings. I am following Mrs. Maribel Ongpin’s dictum on provenance — for the sake of posterity and remembrance.

Opinion

en-ph

2023-04-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-04-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://manilatimes.pressreader.com/article/281694029042876

The Manila Times