1921 / Oil on canvas / 109 x 190.6 cm / Artist: Fabian de la Rosa / Malacañan Palace collection

This painting is a 1921 oil version of the original painting, also called Planting Rice, done in 1904, which was exhibited at the Saint Louis International Exposition, and which won a Gold Medal for Fabian de la Rosa (Santiago in Labrador 2007, 13). An earlier, smaller version of this painting was done by de la Rosa in 1902, and this appears to be compositional precursor of later versions of Planting Rice. The motifs consist of a line of predominantly female and some male farmers planting new shoots of rice crops in a wet field positioned at the center of the composition; the wet field they are on is bordered by narrow pilapil (rice paddy) hedges that demarcate other wet and planted fields in the foreground and background, creating a shallow orthogonal perspective ending in a horizon line demarcated by a row of bamboo groves and other trees; lastly, overhead are hovering gray rain clouds, indicating the scene as the start of the monsoon rice-planting season.

In this 1921 version, the center line of farmers planting rice is divided into two groups. The gap between the groups is filled in by an openwork bamboo basket at the right-center foreground from where more rice shoots are stored, ready for planting. A bare-chested farmer, wearing pinkish pantaloons and a conical hat, is also placed at the extreme left side of the background to add greater stability to the composition. This version also increases the size of the background of planted rice fields, and counterbalances the placement of the bamboo basket with a steeply roofed thatched house to the left-center background. The horizon line of trees is also more prominent, while the grey cloud cover is broken with gaps near the horizon, and toward the upper left-center, where a bird is silhouetted.

This is a successful example of a native genre scene utilizing an academic realist style that eventually gave birth to an entire tradition of depicting Philippine rural scenes that would be popularized by Fernando Amorsolo and the Conservatives of the Mabini School from 1920 to 1950. A descendant of the tipos del pais (country scenes) and rural landscape scenes of the latter Spanish colonial period, Planting Rice was the result of Filipino artists transcribing the academic realist style to become legible to American colonial officials eager to showcase peaceful industry in the countryside after the Philippine-American War. Planting Rice would also play an important role in the crafting of an incipient narrative meant to produce Filipino nationalist affiliation with the scenery and life of lowland agrarian society rather than with urban lifestyles engendered by industrialization.