Paris
5 May 1890
Juan Luna
Dear Rizal,
I have had to work hard to finish some paintings; One for the Salon de Champ de Mars and another of little importance for Madrid (here I have presented a picture as a matter of pure obligation). All this is to you that I have not lacked the desire to answer you letter of 22 February.
Concerning the Philippine biographies, I have given you only my opinion. I have not prohibited their publication in La Solidaridad for I have never pretended to have any influence of the paper’s management; and I am sorry that you have sent my letter to de Pilar because I have no familiarity and friendship with him, as I do with you, and he could interpret my letter as presumptuous and by a meddlesome person.
Here also we have an exhibition of the “Independents.”[1] There are some pictures which are entirely mosaic with the purest colors of the rainbow. Others are worse in form and drawing than the grotesque banners of the friars; and in others which represent landscapes you can see all the details you can imagine; in short, some of the painters are crazy, others incompetent. But it is fortunate that the Salon has opened and we can console ourselves with that, although it is only average. I belong to the dissident salon and F. Hidalgo to the old and routinary one. He has exhibited a picture of Mme. Bousted. The dissident Salon has rejected many works, so that there are few good pictures.
Felipe Roxas with his wife and children has arrived from Manila. He has come for a stay of eight years to educate his children and to paint a little. With him came a young Filipino, surnamed Asuncion, who is going to study painting, pensioned by Agustina Medel[2]…… (This portion is destroyed).
Regards from the family.
Yours,
Luna
P.S.
The fame of the Madrid Filipinos as gamblers has reached the Philippines. The news is a real calamity to Filipino fathers.
03-524 [Reformists]
[1] Luna is referring to the Societe des Artistes Independants , a breakaway group of painters from the more traditional Societe des Artistes Francais . Luna himself was pa rt of, and became very influential in , another breakaway group called Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts . The members of this society considered the old Societe des Artisted Francais to be outmoded, while the Societe des Artistes Independants that had seceded from it in 1884 were to them “too avant-garde to be academically competent and disciplined.”
[2] Wealthy Filipino woman of Manila. She was said to be the prototype of “Doña Victorina”, an ultra-Hispanized Filipino woman character in Rizal’s novel, Noli me tangere.