DAMIAN DOMINGO
(1796 - 1834)
Damian Domingo was born in Manila about the last years of the
eighteenth century to a Spanish father and a Filipina mother, a beauty from
Tondo. Just like Father Jose Burgos, Don Felipe G. Calderon and other noted
great Filipinos, he was a descendant of a family either belonging to the
Spanish nobility or to the middle class.
Damian Domingo showed a marked aptitude
for art at an early age. Upon reaching his early adult age, he was already a
consummate master of the brush. He was the first Filipno painter to specialize
in secular painting, that is, in portraying non-religious themes on canvas.
Among his subjects were the governors-general, beautiful girls, prominent
persons, and panoramic landscapes. He excelted in miniature painting because he
possessed a- photographic eye. According to his great grand-son Don
Alfonso T. Ongpin, he was often commissioned by Manila gallants to paint miniature portraits
(they were then in
Vogue) of their sweethearts. Since custom
did not allow the suitors and painters to
make formal visits, they had to
be content with deliberately walking up and down the street fronting the house where the young belle would
show herself at the window behind fluttering lace fan. After two or three of
such promenades, Domingo would surprise his clients with a perfect likeness of
the lady in question.
It was, in fact, his skill in miniature painting that enabled him marry
a rich and pretty girl of Manila. His miniature painting of señorita Lucia
Casas so fascinated her father, Don Ambrocio Casas (colonel in the militia)
that he invited the young painter to his house. A beautiful romance bloomed
between the painter and the señorita. Out of their marriage came eight
children: Celedonia, Severo (who became a painter like him), Anastacio,
Feliciana, Agapita, (who became a nun), Mariano, Jose (also a painter), and
Nicolasa.
By 1825, the fame of Damian Domingo as a painter was well established. Many prominent citizens
of Manila visited his studio to have their portraits made or simply to admire
his paintings. One of his frequent visitors was Governor-General Mariano
Ricafort (1825-30), who was a patron of the arts and an admirer of the painter.
On June 13, 1826, Domingo was appointed professor of painting at the
first Philippine Academy of Drawing, an
institution established by the Economic Society in 1821 for the development of
arts in the country. Presumably, he
became the school director Although the diploma awarded to him by the society
on March 5, 1827, did not specify that he was the academy director,
nevertheless the duties he discharged
were those of a school head.
The diploma was a public recognition of the highly satisfactory services he rendered to the Academy as
well as for "his conduct, knowledge, talent and assiduousness in the art
of painting."
Under the new set-up, he required that there be no racial descrimination
in his school - that the Spaniard, the mestizo, and native have equal privileges. The students were taught how
to draw still life and the human
form, the art of perspective, painting in oil and and aquarelle, and the preparation of colors and surfaces.
Painters of that epoch painted not
only on canvas, but on wood and ivory, of copper, iron, silver, and sometimes
gold. Religious subjects were favorites
of Filipino painters: the lives and miracles of santos, passion of christ, and
the mysteries of the Virgin Mary. In recognition of his artistic talent and civic work, he was awarded the
honorific title of Lieutenant Of the Spanish Army. In his Les Philippines,
published in Paris in 1846. Jean Mallat, a French resident of Manila, observed
that Domingo’s miniatures showed “markes of great talents,”
The
painter did not live long enough to enjoy the fruit of his
success. He died about 1834, before
reaching the age of 40. His death was a great loss not only to art but to the
Filipino movement for racial equality that was to reach its apogee later in
that century.
To his family and motherland, he left a
lasting legacy – the greatness of the Filipinos in painting. Of his numerous
paintings, only two albums of water-color drawings and three oil paintings are
so far known to exist. Those in oil are: Nuestra Señora del Rosario, Catedra de
S. Pedro Roma, and La Sagrada Familia.
The school which Domingo headed was
forced to close its doors " for lack of funds." For several years,
the country suffered the lack of an art center until the authorities
established an official Academy of Drawing and Painting in 1849, similar to
that of Madrid. Three Spanish painters were also hired - all experienced
professors - among them Cortina and Nieto, to teach the latest methods and
techniques from Europe. They remained in Manila until about 1860 when they were
succeeded by another Spanish painter, Agustin Saez, who remained head of the
academy until his death in 1891. He was succeeded by Lorenzo Rocha, under whose
term the reorganization of the said institution took place, giving more
importance to the technique and introducing more theoretical and practical
subjects. From the portal of the school emerged some of the great Filipino
painters. Domingo in his grave, must have been happy that a number of these
Filipino painters had attained international recognition.
Today, only a few of his paintings and
drawings survive to show his talent and skill. He is remembered as a forerunner
of the Filipino movement for racial equality and as the foremost Filipino
painter of the early nineteenth century.