Pedro Conlu Hernaez
A political paragon from Negros, Pedro Conlu Hernaez was born in Talisay on December 12, 1899 to Rosendo Espinosa Hernaez and Teofila Echecrecho Conlu. According to the Cornejo Commonwealth Directory, he obtained his degrees from San Juan de Letran as well as from the Escuela de Derecho. He was admitted to the Philippine bar in 1921.
He would practice law in Manila briefly but would return to Negros to become immersed in sugar, becoming president of the Talisay-Silay Planters’ Association and an influential figure in this important Philippine industry.
In 1934, he would be elected delegate to the Constitutional Convention from the second district of Negros Occidental. In 1935, he would also be elected assemblyman for the same district, winning re-election in 1938.
Assemblyman Pedro Conlu Hernaez (right) with President Manuel L. Quezon (seated) as he signs into law the cityhood of Bacolod in 1938. Collection of Old Negros (Zyx Xypherz)
One of his most outstanding contributions to the development of Negros was as founding father of the city of Bacolod, being the principal author of the bill that proposed its creation as a chartered city in 1938. President Manuel L. Quezon would sign it into law, Commonwealth Act No. 326—An Act Creating the City of Bacolod.
At the inauguration of Bacolod as a chartered city, 1939. Collection of Jocelle Batapa Sigue
Hernaez would become chairman of several powerful committees during his stint in the National Assembly of the Commonwealth. Later he would also be elected senator, when the bi-cameral Congress was passed into law, serving from 1941 to 1947.
Senator Hernaez (fourth from left) with provincial officials Monsignor Fortich (second from left), Governor Gatuslao (sixth from left), and Mayor Cordova (seventh from left). Collection CP Adorio
During the enforced hiatus of World War II, however, Hernaez would “serve mightily in the cause of the underground and helped scores of USAFFE prisoners of war without seeking any recompense” for his efforts that would put him in great peril, as recounted in Tableau: The Encyclopedia of Distinguished Personalities in the Philippines, published in 1958.
Assemblyman Pedro Conlu Hernaez through the years. Sources: Presidential Museum and Library, Old Negros (Collection of Ramon Severino Conlu Jr.)
In 1945, he would return to the business of law-making with alacrity, sponsoring bills to relieve interest payments during the war years and an act to rehabilitate insurance companies.
President Manuel Roxas would appoint him as member of the Philippine Mission to the United Nations and he would make worthy contributions to the political committees of the world body.
By the 1950s, he would have made his name as a “practical economist” and would be appointed by President Carlos P. Garcia as Secretary of Commerce and Industry.
H.E. Hernaez presents his diplomatic credentials as Philippine Ambassador to Spain to General Franco in 1960. Collection of Manila Nostalgia
President Garcia then appointed him as Philippine Ambassador to Spain from September 15, 1960 to March 31, 1962. In Madrid, he would discover first-hand the artistry of Juan Luna.
Cecilia Hernaez
Hernaez’s wife would be Encarnacion de la Rama, by whom he had two daughters, Celina and Cecilia. Cecilia would be a force in the sugar industry, like her father, founding the First Farmers Human Development Foundation to bring hope and strength to dislocated farmers by channeling critical foreign aid to them.
Cecilia Hernaez, as painted by her sister-in-law, Anita Magsaysay-Ho. From Anita Magsaysay-Ho’s An Artist’s Memoirs
Cecilia would marry the mechanical engineer and industrial specialist, Miguel Magsaysay, who would become a founder of Magsaysay Lines.
La Belleza Feliz y la Esclava Ciega (The Happy Beauty and the Blind Slave) engraving from La Ilustracion Artistica of Barcelona, March 14, 1887
Among the considerable gems of Juan Luna paintings amassed by Ambassador Hernaez was the justly famous La Belleza Feliz y la Esclava Ciega (The Happy Beauty and the Blind Slave), after a Pompeiian legend. Dating from 1887, it was reproduced as an engraving in the Ilustracion Artistica de Barcelona in March of the same year.
Landscape in Bilbao, signed circa 1893
Juan Luna’s newly discovered Tentacion, featuring the artist and his wife, Paz. From the Alfonso Ongpin Archives
Hernaez also scooped up a countryside scene painted by Luna in Bilbao where he sought refuge from the stresses of the year 1892, as well as a series of happier paintings of Luna’s wife Paz picking flowers in the Bois de Boulogne and captured in slumber in its woods. It was recently discovered to be titled Tentacion, as confirmed by the photographic archives of Don Alfonso Ongpin.
La Infancia de la Naturaleza (The Childhood of Nature) is of a far darker beauty as these works and cleaves closer to the raw emotion of the Spoliarium. In La Infancia, an archangel is caught in the light of a rising sun — its rays outlined in a bold impasto — emerging from the chaos of creation. Its wings stiff and head covered in a warrior’s helmet, this divine creature kneels in front of a child who appears to be bathed in blood, streaked in crimson and with such strokes that have become distinctive to Juan Luna. He kneels in homage but with his arms outstretched in protection, ready to take the youngster in his arms. It features a far looser style of painting but still has the same dramatic academic themes as his greatest masterpieces.
La Infancia closes the chapter on the storied collection of the political lion Ambassador Pedro Conlu Hernaez who became an unwitting culture-bearer of his generation with his various important discoveries of Juan Luna works.
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