1928 / Oil on canvas / 96.5 x 17 cm / Artist: Victorio Edades / National Museum of the Philippines collection

This painting was one of Edades’s works shown in his 1928 exhibit at the Philippine Columbian Club, which marked the introduction of modernism in the country. The painter, in academic garb, is engrossed in doing a sketch of a woman reclining on the bed in front of him, while a standing man in a beret, presumably the teacher, looks on. These are composed closely together.

The main concern of the artist is not as much to portray an activity as to create a design with figures. The light-hued, bent arm of the model against the dark background makes a contrapuntal movement with her lower arm stroking her hair, echoed by the artist’s two arms resting on the paper. The curving contour of the white-clad body is a strong design element emphasized by the painter’s dark head. This strong contoured line of her body tilted sideways, along with the pillows supporting her head, and the profiles of the two men bring out a two-dimensional tendency in the shallow space. Furthermore, the artist works in a painterly style, not concealing brushwork but working in bold, rugged strokes, using varied hues such as blue, green, orange, and red to suggest relative depths rather than modeling with tonal gradations. The work shows the influence of the post-Impressionist Cezanne in its composition and style.