PROPERTY FROM THE BENITO J. LEGARDA JR. COLLECTION

ABOUT THE WORK

Perhaps the most romantic of the iconic 19th century Filipino masters, Félix Resurrección Hidalgo y Padilla was also one of its most delicate academics. Raised in a conservative but extremely wealthy family of lawyers and landowners, Félix would only manage to escape into the world of art by moving to Europe to attend the Royal Academy of San Fernando in 1879. Madrid and later Rome, and most of all Paris, would become his home but he would never shake off a certain studious manner and devotion to painstaking detail that perhaps he inherited from his Padilla forebears who were noted for their punctiliousness. This diligence of mind always served him in good stead in his art. Resurrección Hidalgo belonged to the artistic social set that would summer in Normandy and Brittany, which were conveniently close to Paris. Both were the perfect settings for his landscapes and more often, seascapes that were the product of his leisure time. The Hidalgos and Legardas were part of Manila’s ancient 400 and were neighbors in the old district of Quiapo along Calle San Sebastian, (later renamed after R. Hidalgo after the painter.) One can easily imagine that this was one of the gifts from one friend of the family to another. Of course, the Legarda home was filled to the brim with the painter’s works. The work at hand appears to have been painted in the late morning of a clear-skied day, in contrast to his brooding works going towards twilight. The air seems crisp, the craggy outgrowths and rocks are in sharp contrast to what appears to be a vista in pale blue. “Cool and soothing” is how one biographer, the eminent E. Arsenio Manuel, described his small landscapes. (Lisa Guerrero Nakpil)