One thing that is noticeable about the painting is the lady’s wealth. With her dress and gloves, her coffee, and the mere fact that she’s there, where the upper class of society would drink and socialize, evident with the three men in the background. Despite all the lavish privileges she bears, trying staring into the woman’s eyes, where she does not meet the audience, but looks down, somewhat disappointed and unhappy. Her face looks calm, yet you can feel a vibe of unsatisfactory. Her posture may be presented straight up to perceive the woman as proper and elite, but her position also sets her relaxing on the cushion, her legs in an unusually uncomfortable position, where she has been more buried in thought to notice the uncomfortable position she has unconsciously taken. This may symbolize where she as she has been busy to notice the uncomfortable lifestyle she has, that she has just gotten used to it and has learned to ignore the misery of it. Her leaning back shows that she is stopping to rest and look back at her situation and assess her lifestyle. Even though her clothes and coffee are things only the few can have, she feels the need for a cathartic moment, but never felt it in the luxury of wealth; where it isn’t enough, or it isn’t the one that truly satisfy her; where the luxury around her can’t save her from the things in her head. We might not know why she feels what her body language tells us, we know that luxury can’t save her from every misery she’ll feels right now; and that can prove as a lesson to the viewers of the painting, that wealth can never save us always, and can sometimes leave us empty even if we think we have more.
Unlike the Spolarium, the Parisian Life has a relaxed and playful mood. There are two special things about this painting. One is the lady portraying the mirrored image of the map of the Philippines. If you reverse the painting, it will look like the structure of the archipelago. The last is the meaning. Isolation. Based on the painting by Juan Luna, the lady is sitting on the couch alone, while there are three men chatting or conversing in a round table. The lady portrays the Philippines that was isolated during the time of the colonizers because the Filipinos didn’t have the freedom unless you have Spanish and American blood. A well-known fact that the audience believe is the three men wearing black coats were Juan Luna facing forward in the center, Dr. Jose Rizal’s half turn back and Ariston Bautista Lin, sitting the closest to the lady, who were on a voyage. Those three men on the painting were portrayed as “Embraced Western Lifestyle while remaining Filipino at heart.”
Juan Luna
The painting “Parisian Life” was painted by Juan Luna y Novicio. He was born on October 23, 1857 at Badoc, Ilocos Norte and died on December 7, 1899 at British Hong Kong. Juan Luna was a Filipino painter, sculptor and a political activist of the Philippine Evolution in the late 19th century and he became one of the first recognized Philippine artists. Don Lorenzo Guerrero became his first tutor and convinced his parents to send him to Spain. There, he took private lessons under Alejo Vera, a famous Spanish contemporary painter. Alejo Vera took Luna in Rome wherein he was exposed to the immortal works of the Renaissance masters.
Other than the “Parisian Life”, he also has some other famous paintings/masterpieces, namely “The Spolarium”, “LaBatalla de Lepanto” (The Battle of Lepanto), “El Pacto de Sangre” (The Blood Compact) and the “Don Miguel de Legazpi”.
Details
The Parisian Life (also known as Interior d’un Café or Inside a Café) is an oil in canvas impressionist painting. It is one of the paintings that in a period in Juan Luna’s life, the tones and mood of his paintings shifted from dark to light. This is also the only painting where Juan Luna himself is a character in the painting.
Located in National Museum of Fine Arts, Manila, Philippines
The painting (57 cm x 79 cm in dimension) currently owned by the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) is located at the National Museum of Fine Arts. It is considered to be Juan Luna’s masterpiece that he created in Paris, France.
After Juan Luna finished his masterpiece, it was exhibited only once in the World’s Fair’s Saint Louis Exposition in the United States and won a silver medal.
Ariston Bautista Lin, one of the characters in the painting, was the original owner of The Parisian Life. Later on, the GSIS Museum bought it at Christie’s auction house in Hong Kong at the price of $870000 (around P45.4 to P46 million). After procuring the painting, it was toured around the Philippines with University of Santo Tomas’s Museum of Arts and Sciences as its last destination.
The Parisian Life 