A Magsaysay-Ho gifted to loyal employee, Botong from an American collection lead León’s year-end auction

Ocampo, Joya, Zobel, and rare historical maps rounded out The Kingly Treasures Auction 2023

Philippine historical rarities and art masterpieces seemingly straight out of cabinets of curiosities performed best in León Gallery’s year-end sale, The Kingly Treasures Auction 2023, held Dec. 2, 2023. It was a fitting culmination to the celebration of the country’s 125th independence anniversary.

The foremost Filipino modernists topbilled the highly successful sale, starting with the work of  Anita Magsaysay-Ho, touted as the “Queen of Auctions,” whose 1957 work, Harvesters, fetched P32.4 million (inclusive of buyer’s premium). The masterpiece,  exhibited twice in the pioneering and historied Philippine Art Gallery, was once owned by Mr. Dee K. Chiong, former president and chairman of China Banking Corporation. Upon his passing, his wife, Regina, bequeathed the idyllic Harvesters to Mr. Dee’s loyal secretary of two decades, Leticia B. Lucas.

Carlos “Botong” V. Francisco’s Bayanihan went for P28.8 million. A work formerly in the collection of Herbert and Gertrud Harder, an American couple from New York’s Fifth Avenue, Bayanihan is the only known easel-sized work in oil of Botong’s iconic Bayanihan mural, which is now in a private collection.

HR Ocampo’s dynamic Dreams, from the collection of Don Vicente “Tiking” H. Lopez, Jr., went for P13.2 million. Two works representing two different spectrums of the versatility of Fernando Zóbel, whose 100th birth anniversary will be on Aug. 27, 2024, fetched impressive figures. An early figurative work from 1954, Study of Cafetera Expres (II), went for more than P6 million, while one of the artist’s last works, Recreo con Raya Roja, painted two years before Zobel’s early death in 1984, brought in more than P12 million.