The parents of Juan Luna, the greatest and most eminent Filipino painter, were Ilocanos and of humble birth. The young artist was born in Ilocos Norte in the year 1857 and died in Hong Kong in 1899. From childhood he was hot-tempered. His early education was at home. At the age of twelve he was a good caricaturist. His father then sent him to Manila to attend the "Ateneo Municipal." At the age of twenty-one he was sent to Madrid, where he studied art under several famous Spanish and Italian painters. He was given prizes at the expositions in Madrid and Paris. In Spain he met Miss Paz Pardo de Tavera, whom he married three years later. He became very popular. Some of his friends were Dr. Jose Rizal, Dr. Roxas, the famous Italian tenor, Payarre, and many of the French and Spanish nobility. He was especially loved by women, of whose hearts and inclinations he showed a knowledge very intimate. Juan Luna had an art which is seldom found in man, an instinct found only in real genius, a power to portray and interpret life, tenderness and the emotions of wrath and pity.
He was tall and well built, with a high forehead, a short flat nose and large black impressive eyes. In about the year 1890, while he was at Paris, a terrible thing occurred. His wife began to be untrue to him. It is said that one day Paz asked Juan to let her go to a certain shop to buy some thread. He allowed her to go, but soon followed her because he suspected her. He saw that Paz did not go to a shop but to a private house. He walked in and found his wife with another man. Then the crisis began. Luna was blind with anger. He took Paz home and asked her to explain to him her late behaviour. After many a tear, after many excuses and explanations, after many promises to be good, Paz was pardoned.
Two months later Luna asked his wife to go with him and their two children to live in a village near by. Paz at first said she would not go; but through the request of her mother and brothers, she assented to Luna's plan. On the day of their departure, when the carriages which were to take them to the neighboring village were in front of the door, Paz went to the bath-room with her mother. Juan knocked at the door and asked her to come down for it was getting late. Paz then shouted out of the window, saying that her husband was killing her. All at once Luna rushed to his room, took his pistol, opened the bath-room door with a sudden push, and fired at every one who came in his way. His mother-in-law, wife and elder son were killed, and his younger son was wounded.
In this deed we see the real character of Luna. He was generous and cold-blooded; but when his pride, name and honor were wounded, his blood boiled in his head, he trembled, and saw nothing before him—neither God nor man—but only the guilty.
The police then arrested him. He was tried the following day. The newspapers spread this piece of news to the world under their title: "La Tragedia en Paris." Fortunately he was acquitted. The judges decided that man's honor is his life, and that when it is once destroyed it can never be supplied.
Luna was the greatest artist and painter that the Philippines has ever produced. He is great in his own country and ranks among the world's good painters.
In 1899 he came back to the Philippines; but on his way home, while at Hong Kong, he died of apoplexy and a broken heart. His son was brought to Manila by a friend. Andres, his son, is now twenty years of age and is also a good painter, but not like his father.
The Philippines produced one of the world painters, showing the fact that a great worker and a great mind can not be hidden, even by tyranny and oppression.
—Dolores Asuncion.