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By Go Bon Juan
(Editor’s note: The Sixth
Dr. Jose P. Rizal Awards for Excellence awarding ceremony will be
held at 7 p.m., June 14, at the Kaisa-Angelo King Heritage Center on
Anda and Cabildo streets, Intramuros, Manila.)
Of the six exhibits that opened
February 14, 2007 at the Ayala Museum under the exhibition
“Chinese Diaspora: Art Streams from the Mainland,” one was named
“Damian Domingo, The First Great Filipino Painter.”
Domingo’s inclusion in a
Chinese Diaspora exhibition means he has something to do with the
Chinese. The introduction to his exhibit explains the connection.
Folklore said Domingo
“identified himself on his recently discovered last will and
testament [dated 1843] as a Chinese mestizo.” Before that, people
assumed Domingo was a Spanish mestizo, which explains why studies on
Chinese mestizos never mentioned him.
Accounts show that in 1741, the
Gremio de Mestizos de Sangley, a group of Chinese mestizos to which
Domingo’s forebears belonged, was officially established in Tondo,
Manila. On February 12, 1796, Domingo was born to Don Domingo
Macario, a Chinese mestizo and Doña Ermercegilda Gabriela of Tondo.
Domingo was an accomplished
painter of portraits, religious images and miniature artworks. He
was also the first Filipino painter to depict secular subjects
through a series of albums detailing Philippine costumes of the
period. He excelled in painting details because of his photographic
eye.
In 1821, Damian Domingo set up
the country’s first private art school in his residence in Tondo.
He was later appointed professor and director of the first official
Philippine School of Fine Arts, the Academia de Dibujo, because of
his “conduct, knowledge, talent and assiduousness in the art of
painting.”
Domingo was also an early
advocate of racial equality. He ensured that any applicant,
regardless of class, could enroll at the academy. His albums were
the first to depict native priests and beatas—endowing his
subjects with essentially the same features, regardless of origins.
His niche as a Chinese mestizo in
Philippine history earned for him a nook, literally, at the Bahay
Tsinoy: Museum of the Chinese in Philippine life.
With his great achievements and
contributions to Philippine art, Domingo, the first great Filipino
painter, is no doubt one of the great Chinese mestizos in Philippine
history.
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