Note 4 — Chapter III · FIRST CONTACTS WITH THE ENEMY

He had as great a command over his brush and pencil; his sketch-book has a certain charm, distinctive and rare; he had the French artist’s uncanny power to suggest with a single line an inevitable trait or an overmastering feature of a landscape. He could paint before he had taken a lesson. When he was a mere boy, still at Calamba, before he had entered the Ateneo, a banner was spoiled that was to have been used in one of the local festivals that were then so important; José painted in its place a banner that all men declared to be better than the original.4 At the Ateneo he carved an image of the Virgin Mother that won the unstinted praise of men not novices in art, and a statue of Christ that for twenty years was one of the admired exhibits of the school hall.