Explore the Documentation and exhibition of this artwork, The Parisian Life (painting).
The original owner of the painting was Ariston Bautista Lin and his family.  Before its modern-day exhibition at Christie's auction house in Hong Kong, The Parisian Life was featured on page 147 of Santiago Albano Pilar's book entitled Juan Luna, The Filipino as Painter published in 1980.  Pilar's book was published by the Eugenio Lopez Foundation.  Pilar reproduced the copy of the painting from the Luis Araneta collection.  After Luna completed The Parisian Life it was exhibited only once for public viewing, an exhibition held in 1904 at the World's Fair’s Saint Louis Exposition in the United States, where it won as a silver medalist.  Apart from being accompanied by a Saint Louis Exposition certificate, Christie’s Hong Kong gave it an estimated price tag of HK$1,800,000 - HK$2,000,000, an equivalent of $231,921 - $257,690.  Despite this price estimate, the GSIS Museum, a Philippine-government owned and controlled corporation, bought the painting from Christie's Hong Kong in October 2002 for the price of $870,000 (P 45.4 to 46 million).  After procuring Luna’s The Parisian Life from Christie’s, the GSIS Museum toured the painting around the Philippines.  In January 2004, The Parisian Life’s final destination for the tour was the University of Santo Tomas’s Museum of Arts and Sciences (the oldest museum in the Philippines), where other two Luna paintings are parts of the university’s art collection, namely the Playa de Kamakura (“Kamakura Bay”) and The Italian Soldier.
World's Fair Ariston Bautista Lin Saint Louis Exposition Filipino Juan Luna University of Santo Tomas Christie's P Hong Kong Philippines GSIS Museum Paris