Provenance: Private Collection, Amsterdam

ABOUT THE WORK

Resurrección Hidalgo would paint the grandees, gentlemen and ladies of Manila, including the influential and immensely rich dons Pedro Paterno, Benito Legarda, and striking society women such as Teresa Tuason, to name a few. He would also capture on canvas the Eurasian millionaires who traveled in the same circuit as José Rizal, the Pardo de Taveras, and the Luna brothers. Alfredo Roces in his monumental book Félix Resurrección Hidalgo and the Generation of 1872 (published by the Eugenio Lopez Foundation in 1995) notes that “An item in the ‘La Solidaridad’ mentions Hidalgo going off to the summer home of the wealthy Bousteds in Biarritz as he had been commissioned to paint the portrait of Madame Bousted.” The Bousteds’ daughter Nellie was an heiress to a fortune built on Singapore and Malaysian tin and rubber. Both Antonio Luna and Jose Rizal would compete for her favor. Roces would feature a painting titled Ensimismada (Lost in Thought), signed in the same style and dated Paris 1887. It is marked at the back with “T. A. Z. Lukassen neé Valck.” Madame Theodora Valck Lukassen was married to an offspring of the gentleman Don Theodore Reinier Nicolaas Lucassen, the son of Theodore Lucassen and Josine Holmberg de Beckfelt. The Lucassens were one of those families with one foot in Europe and the other in Asia, or more properly the Hague, Netherlands, and Java, Indonesia. By their addresses, one can deduce their merchant connections to the affluent Dutch empire in those islands. They would almost certainly be part of the expatriate community that swirled around the Filipinos in Spain and France. In this portrait, the solidly prosperous Don Theodore looks the viewer straight in the eye from his comfortable perch. A half-smile dances across his face, indicating a gentle if worldly personality. His pink cheeks are wreathed by a mutton-chop beard fashionable at the time. He is dressed as a proper Victorian gentleman with a double-breasted and buttoned long jacket worn with blindingly white collar and cuffs. A pince-nez on a gold chain and discreet rings are entrancing details. An overcoat trimmed with sable completes the picture of authority and position. Félix Resurrección Hidalgo here demonstrates his mastery of delicate line and subtle shading, giving his subject a certain lightness of being as a result of the forest-like colorations. The subject’s face and hands illuminate the portrait and tell the story of success. -Lisa Guerrero Nakpil